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Naples Biscuit

A sweet biscuit made with flour, sugar, egg whites, egg yolks, Madeira wine, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Naples Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, egg whites, egg yolks, Madeira wine, and mace.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto baking pans.

  2. Place the pans in the oven and let the biscuits harden gradually until crisp, turning them frequently.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Madeira wine + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together243 recipes
  5. Sugar + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 starch and structure that hold the biscuits together as they dry.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning and a crisp texture.
Egg whites
Whipped air and protein give lift and a light, dry structure as they set.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, softening the texture and helping browning.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic flavour and a little moisture to the batter.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the biscuits slowly in the oven. Baking at a low temperature and turning them often dries the biscuits evenly, so they become crisp throughout rather than browning on the outside while staying soft inside.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, madeira wine. 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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