Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Biscuits

Savory biscuits topped with a spicy chutney, butter, curry powder, cheese, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Devilled Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the topping

  1. Chop the chutney finely.

  2. Mix the butter with the curry powder.

  3. Add the chutney and grated cheese to the butter mixture.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and mustard, then mix thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the mixture thickly on buttered plain biscuits.

  2. Heat the biscuits on a buttered tin in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Serve quickly.

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. Mustard + biscuittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Bengal or other chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the savoury cheese and spice.
Grated cheese
Melts under heat to give the topping a rich, binding texture.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and adds fat for richness and gentle browning.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavour of the topping.

The step that matters

Serve quickly. Cheese and butter topping cools and firms soon after leaving the oven, and the biscuit softens as it sits. Serving while hot keeps the topping soft and melted.

“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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesPotato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipes