Skip to main content
Dessert

Dessert Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made from egg whites, yolks, sugar, and flour, baked in a moderate oven.

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

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 ↓

Dessert Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the mixture

  1. Combine egg yolks and sifted sugar in a bowl, stirring continuously for 5 minutes.

  2. Whip egg whites until stiff.

  3. Fold the stiff egg whites into the yolk mixture along with the flour.

Pipe the biscuits

  1. Shape a stiff piece of white paper into a funnel, secure the funnel with a little paste, and let the paper dry.

  2. Fill the funnel with the biscuit mixture.

  3. Fold the paper over like a lid, cutting an opening 1 inch in diameter.

  4. Pipe the mixture onto a stiff sheet of white paper in finger shapes, 1 inch wide and 3 inches long, leaving space between them.

  5. Dust the biscuits with pounded sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the biscuits on a baking tin.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes.

  3. Once cool, remove the biscuits and arrange them.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam that traps air and gives the biscuits their light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and enrich the batter with flavor and tenderness.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps stabilize the batter while the yolks are beaten.
Dry sifted flour
Provides structure that sets the folded batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding the stiff egg whites into the yolk mixture. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the biscuits dense and flat instead of light and crisp.

“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.

More dessert biscuits recipes

Plain 3 See all 11 →

You might also like

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