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Dessert

Biscuits and Small Cakes

A sweet dough made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, water, yeast, lemon essence, and turmeric, shaped into buns, candied lemon peel, baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,192 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Biscuits and Small Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA fierce oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fierce oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, water, yeast, essence of lemon, and turmeric to form a dough.

  2. Let the dough rise overnight until bright and clear.

Shape and bake

  1. Weigh the dough into pieces and shape into buns.

  2. Brush the buns with milk and dust with coarsely crushed sugar.

  3. Place a strip of candied lemon peel on each bun and let them rise again.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for ten 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 + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. Yeast needs time to build gas and flavour; the dough should look bright and clear as it rises, and under-proofing leaves the buns dense and heavy.

Swap the turmeric

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Turmericthe original

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