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Cheese Biscuits

Cheese biscuits are small, buttery biscuits made with cheese, flour, butter, egg yolk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour.

  3. Work in the cheese, beaten egg yolk, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Add enough milk to form a firm paste.

  5. Roll out the paste to ½ inch thick and cut into rounds.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the rounds in a buttered pan and bake for about 8 minutes.

  2. If not served fresh, reheat before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Rubbed into the flour, it coats flour particles and makes the biscuits tender and short.
Flour
Forms the structure of the biscuits once mixed with liquid and baked.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, enriching the dough and contributing to browning.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness and fat for a tender crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together into a firm, workable paste.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Too much milk makes the paste sticky and hard to cut, while too little leaves it crumbly. Add it gradually until the dough just holds together as a firm paste, since flour hydrates as it rests and gluten develops with handling.

“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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