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Dessert

Melton Biscuits

A biscuit made with flour, ground rice, sugar, coconut, lemon and orange rinds, eggs, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Melton Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, ground rice, sugar, orange rind, lemon rind, and coconut together.

  2. Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl.

  3. Melt the butter and pour it into the flour mixture.

  4. Add the whisked eggs and mix everything to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to about ⅛ inch thick and cut into 2‑inch biscuits with a plain cutter.

  2. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet, stick a strip of lemon peel on each, and bake in a moderate oven (375°F) for 10 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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Coconut + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  5. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough that holds the biscuits together.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the biscuits a tender, crumbly texture.
Ground rice
Gives the biscuits a short, slightly crisp and crumbly texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown lightly in the oven.
Desiccated coconut
Adds flavour and a slightly chewy texture to the biscuits.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough to an even thickness. Even thickness lets the biscuits bake at the same rate, so thin spots do not burn while thick spots stay raw in the centre.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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