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Dessert

French Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with butter, sugar, egg, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the egg and sour milk, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the baking soda and enough flour to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Sprinkle the tops with sugar.

  3. Place on a baking sheet and bake until golden brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the biscuits a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and, creamed with butter, helps create a light structure.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness to the biscuits.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the biscuits rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, helping the biscuits rise and spread.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda and enough flour to form a dough.. Baking soda needs an acid to activate, so it should be mixed in with the sour milk and dough promptly. Adding too much flour makes the biscuits dense and tough, so stop once the dough just holds together.

“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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