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Dessert

Cheese Biscuits

Cheese biscuits are baked biscuits made with flour, cheese, butter, baking powder, salt, mustard, cayenne pepper, egg yolks, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cheese Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, stir baking powder, mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt into the flour.

  3. Rub the softened butter into the flour mixture.

  4. Gently mix in the grated cheese.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and water; mix until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut with a small cutter.

  2. Bake until light 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 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. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the biscuits as its proteins and starch set in the oven.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and a rich, short texture.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, and helps the biscuits brown as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the biscuits rise and become light.
Egg yolks
Bind the dough together and add richness and colour.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the butter. If the butter is overworked or too warm, it blends fully into the flour and the biscuits turn tough or greasy instead of short and flaky. Rub it in lightly until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cheese, butter, mustard, pepper, egg):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cheese, butter, mustard, pepper, 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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