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Dessert

Cheese Biscuits

Cheese biscuits are small, lightly baked biscuits made with flour, butter, cheese, egg yolk, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cheese Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, and cayenne pepper. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

  3. Add grated cheese, egg yolk, and lemon juice; mix to form a stiff paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and stamp out small round biscuits.

  2. Bake for a few minutes until lightly golden.

Serve

  1. Before serving, top each biscuit with a small pyramid of whipped cream.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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 structure of the biscuit as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to make the biscuits short and tender.
Grated cheese
Adds rich savoury flavour and fat to the dough.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness and colour.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough has little water and fat to hold, so it bakes quickly and crisps evenly. Thick pieces stay soft in the centre and may not brown properly in the few minutes of baking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, butter, cheese, egg, cream):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, butter, cheese, egg, cream. 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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