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Dessert

Best Savoy Biscuits

Savoy biscuits are made from eggs, rose or orange-flower water, powdered sugar, and sifted flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Best Savoy Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat 12 eggs, leaving out half the whites, with a whisk.

  3. Add 2-3 tablespoons of rose or orange-flower water and 1 pound of powdered sugar while whisking until thick and white.

  4. Gently mix in 1 pound 2 ounces of sifted flour with a wooden spoon.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the batter into long cakes on a baking sheet and sift sugar over them.

  2. Bake in a cool oven, watching closely to prevent scorching.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Rose + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Whipped to trap air, giving the biscuits their light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Whisked with the eggs to add sweetness and help the batter thicken and turn white.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that sets the batter into a firm, dry biscuit.
Rose or orange-flower water
Adds a delicate floral aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Baking in a cool oven. The biscuits are dried and set slowly at low heat. A hot oven would scorch the sugar-rich surface before the interior sets, so watch them closely.

“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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