Skip to main content
Dessert

Cinnamon Biscuits

Cinnamon biscuits are made from eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cinnamon Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs well.

  2. Add the sugar and cinnamon to the eggs.

  3. Mix in enough flour to create a proper consistency.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into rounds.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the biscuits.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown as they bake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shaped biscuits together.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the biscuits.

The step that matters

Mix in enough flour to create a proper consistency. Flour sets the structure of the dough. Adding too much makes the dough stiff and the biscuits dry and tough, while too little leaves the dough too soft to roll and cut cleanly.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Jalapenofits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

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

You might also like