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Dessert

Hermit Biscuit

A simple biscuit made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, volatile salts, and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Hermit Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour.

  3. Add the sugar and mix well.

  4. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  5. Dissolve the volatile salts in hot water and allow the solution to cool.

  6. Add the cooled solution to the mixture.

  7. Add milk gradually to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into round cakes.

  2. Wet the tops with milk.

  3. Sprinkle with pulverized sugar.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once combined with liquid.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure.
Volatile salts
Acts as a leavening agent that helps the cakes rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Allow the volatile salts solution to cool. Adding the solution while it is still hot can drive off its leavening gas too quickly and weaken the rise, so cooling it first helps the dough keep its lift.

“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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