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Dessert

Plain Dessert or Wine Biscuits, and Ginger Biscuits

A biscuit made from flour, butter, milk, sugar, and optionally ginger, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Dessert or Wine Biscuits, and Ginger Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the plain biscuits

  1. Rub two ounces of fresh butter into a pound of flour and make it into a stiff paste with new milk.

  2. Roll the dough out half an inch thick and cut the biscuits with a round cutter the size of half-a-crown.

  3. Pile the biscuits one on the other until all are done; then roll them out very thin, prick them, and lay them on lightly-floured tins, the pricked side downwards.

  4. Bake the biscuits in a moderate oven for a few minutes until they are very crisp and slightly browned.

Make the ginger biscuits

  1. For the ginger biscuits, combine three ounces of good butter with two pounds of flour, add three ounces of pounded sugar and two ounces of ginger in fine powder, and knead into a stiff paste with new milk.

  2. Roll the dough thin, stamp out the biscuits with a cutter, and bake them in a slow oven until they are crisp through but keep them pale in colour.

  3. Optionally, mix a couple of eggs with the milk for the ginger biscuits; an additional ounce of sugar may be used if a sweeter biscuit is desired.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

608Calories
13 gProtein
13 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Ginger1 tsp grated fresh (2g)2

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the paste hold together as it bakes crisp.
Flour
Provides the structure that the biscuit dough sets into when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown lightly in the oven.
Ginger
Gives the biscuits their characteristic warm, spicy aroma and flavour.
Milk (in the method)
Moistens the flour so it binds into a workable paste.

The step that matters

Baking the ginger biscuits pale. A slow oven dries the thin dough gradually so it turns crisp through; a hotter oven or longer time would brown the sugar and starch and darken the biscuits.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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