Skip to main content
Dessert

Finger-biscuits

Finger biscuits are small, sweet baked strips made from egg yolks, powdered sugar, egg whites, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Finger-biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with powdered sugar until frothy.

  2. Gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

  3. Sift in the flour and mix until combined.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag.

Pipe and bake

  1. Pipe strips 2-3 inches long onto sheets of paper, placing two rows on each sheet.

  2. Sprinkle fine sugar over the biscuits.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 12-14 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. 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).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the biscuits lightness and an airy structure.
Egg yolks
Mixed with sugar to add richness and help the batter hold together.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the piped strips into a firm biscuit.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the yolks for a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the whipped egg whites. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the biscuits bake flat and dense instead of light and airy.

“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