Skip to main content
Dessert

Biscuits

Biscuits made with powdered sugar, currants, butter, cream, egg yolks, rose water, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Biscuits

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

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.

Make the paste

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Mix in the sugar and currants.

  3. Add the cream, egg yolks, rose water, and mace.

  4. Work the paste until well combined.

  5. Warm the paste in a dish before the fire.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into cakes and place on a well-buttered tin.

  2. Prick the tops of the cakes with holes.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and flour 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

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps give the biscuits a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the biscuits rich and tender.
Egg yolks
Enrich the paste and help bind it together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the paste.
Currants
Add chewy sweetness and fruity flavour throughout the biscuits.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma to the biscuits.

The step that matters

Work the paste until well combined. Thorough mixing spreads the butter, liquids and currants evenly through the dough, so the biscuits bake uniformly and hold their shape instead of cracking or turning greasy in patches.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, currant, butter, cream, egg, rose, 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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes