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Dessert

Prussian Biscuit

A sweet biscuit made with sugar, kirschenwasser, flour, almond flavor, clarified butter, and shredded filbert kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prussian Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, kirschenwasser, flour, almond flavor, clarified butter, and shredded filbert kernels until well combined.

  3. Grease deep fancy molds and sprinkle the bottoms with shredded filbert kernels.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into the molds and bake until golden.

  2. Ice the biscuits with glace icing flavored with kirschenwasser.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + filberttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + filberttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

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
Provides the structure that holds the biscuit's shape as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface turn golden during baking.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb and buttery flavor.
Shredded filbert kernels
Adds crunchy texture and nutty flavor to the batter and molds.
Kirschenwasser
Adds a cherry-brandy aroma and flavor to the batter and icing.

The step that matters

Greasing the deep fancy molds. Deep, detailed molds need thorough greasing so the delicate batter releases cleanly without sticking. The fat also helps the sprinkled nuts adhere to the bottoms of the biscuits.

Swap the filbert

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, almond, butter. 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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