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Dessert

Queen's Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with flour, powdered sugar, eggs, and coriander seeds.

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 ↓

Queen's Biscuits

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).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, powdered sugar, egg yolks, egg whites, and crushed coriander seeds.

  2. If desired, add a little yeast to the mixture.

  3. Mix until a soft paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the paste into biscuits and place them on parchment paper.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until they begin to brown.

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. Flour + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + coriandertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the biscuits set and hold their shape.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and fat, giving a tender texture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Bake until they just begin to brown. Sugar and egg proteins brown quickly in the oven, so pulling the biscuits when they first colour keeps them from over-browning, drying out or turning bitter.

Swap the coriander

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

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

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