Skip to main content
Dessert

Biscuits, Etc

A sweet biscuit made with nuts, flour, butter, spices, treacle, and honey.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Biscuits, Etc

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the nuts with the flour or rice flour.

  3. Add the butter and spices, then mix in enough treacle and honey to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the paste into little heaps or roll it out and cut into shapes.

  2. Bake 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Nuts + honeytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Nuts + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

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

Flour or rice flour
Provides the main structure that holds the paste together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and helps the biscuits brown.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour and moisture to bind the paste.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the paste hold together and brown.
Nuts
Add richness, flavour and a crumbly texture to the biscuits.

The step that matters

Mix in enough treacle and honey to form a paste. Too little liquid leaves the dough crumbly and unable to hold its shape, while too much makes it sticky and spreads during baking. Adding the syrups gradually lets you reach a workable, shapeable consistency.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, honey):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, honey. 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

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