Skip to main content
Dessert

Feather Biscuits

A yeasted biscuit made with flour, butter, milk, sugar, eggs, and yeast, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Feather Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Rub together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs and part of the flour.

  3. Stir in the warm milk, the rest of the flour, and the yeast.

  4. Mix well for 10 minutes.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the mixture rise overnight.

  2. In the morning, fill gem roll pans three-fourths full.

  3. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 1 hour.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main structure of the biscuits as its proteins develop with mixing.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, making the biscuits light and airy.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives richness and flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough and enrich its crumb.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and dissolves the sugar and yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise overnight. Yeast needs time to ferment and produce gas, which lifts the dough. A short or cold rise leaves the biscuits dense, so the dough should be allowed to fully rise before shaping and baking.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes