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Dessert

Milanais [Milanese Dessert Biscuits)

A buttery, lemon-flavored biscuit made with butter, sugar, flour, egg yolks, and lemon zest, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and angelica match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 189 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Milanais [Milanese Dessert Biscuits)

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks and mix with a spatula or spoon for ten minutes.

  3. Add the grated lemon and work in the flour.

  4. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for one hour.

Shape and decorate

  1. Roll out the dough to a thickness of ¼ inch.

  2. Cut into fancy shapes using a biscuit cutter.

  3. Place the shapes on a baking sheet.

  4. Brush the tops with egg yolk and decorate with glace fruit and almonds.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for fifteen 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. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Angelica + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to create the rich, tender body of the biscuit.
Castor sugar
Creams with butter and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shapes after cutting and baking.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping bind the dough and give a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Chill the dough for one hour. Chilling firms the butter so the cut shapes hold their edges and do not spread or toughen in the oven. Rolling warm, soft dough makes it sticky and hard to shape cleanly.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

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