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Dessert

Cheese Biscuits

Cheese biscuits are small baked pastries made with cheese, flour, butter, egg yolk, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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, mix the grated cheese with the butter and flour until well combined.

  3. Add the egg yolk and cayenne pepper, mixing until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thin and cut into biscuit shapes using a tin cutter.

  2. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake until light brown, about 10 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Grated cheese
Adds rich savoury flavour and helps the dough bind and brown as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it be rolled thin.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the biscuits tender and short in texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness, helping it hold together when cut.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and crisply through, while thicker pieces stay soft and doughy in the centre. Even thickness also helps the biscuits brown evenly.

“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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