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Cheese and Celery Biscuits

Baked biscuits topped with a mixture of double cream, Parmesan, celery, and spices, garnished with pistachios, celery leaves, mustard, and cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cheese and Celery 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.

Bake the biscuits

  1. Roll out the cheese pastry and cut it into biscuits.

  2. Prick the biscuits with a fork.

  3. Bake the biscuits in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  4. Allow the biscuits to cool.

Make the topping

  1. In a bowl, mix the double cream, grated Parmesan, chopped celery, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Stir or whip the mixture slightly.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Pile the mixture onto the cooled biscuits.

  2. Garnish with chopped pistachio nuts, celery leaves, and sprays of mustard and cress.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cheese + parmesan cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,041 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pistachio + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese pastry
Forms the crisp, golden biscuit base that holds the topping.
Double cream
Adds richness and a soft, spreadable moisture to the topping.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and some firmness to the topping.
Celery
Contributes a fresh, crunchy texture and mild savoury flavour.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, cream, parmesan cheese, celery, pepper, pistachio, mustard):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, cream, parmesan cheese, celery, pepper, pistachio, mustard. 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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