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Dessert

Naples' Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with orange flower water, sugar, eggs, and flour, baked in paper molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Naples' Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, orange flower water, and sugar; boil until sugar melts.

  2. Pour the syrup into the beaten eggs while stirring quickly.

  3. Beat the mixture until cold, then stir in the flour.

Bake

  1. Prepare paper moulds for the biscuits and pour the batter into them.

  2. Place the moulds on baking tins and dust with fine sugar before baking.

  3. Watch closely while baking to prevent scorching.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Orange + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs provide structure and richness, setting the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Gives the batter body and structure so the biscuits hold their shape.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the batter and, dusted on top, helps the biscuits brown.

The step that matters

Watch closely while baking. Sugar browns and scorches quickly in an oven, so the biscuits can turn bitter before they are cooked through. Checking them during baking prevents this.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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