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Cheese Biscuits

Cheese biscuits are fried dough made with grated cheese, flour, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheese Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated cheese, flour, and egg yolk.

  2. Add salt, black pepper, and cayenne to taste.

  3. Whip the egg white until stiff peaks form and gently fold it into the mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat frying fat in a deep pan.

  2. Drop the mixture by teaspoonfuls into the hot fat and fry until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels and serve in a pyramidal shape on a folded napkin.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cheese + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,860 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cheese
Provides flavour and fat, and browns during frying to give a savoury crust.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the biscuit together while it fries.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it lightens the mixture and helps the biscuits puff and stay tender.
Egg yolk
Binds the cheese and flour into a cohesive dough and adds richness.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Stiff egg white holds air that lifts the batter. Folding gently preserves that air; stirring vigorously deflates it, leaving dense, flat biscuits.

“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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