When I was learning to bake, I was limited to my mother's repertoire of eggy desserts and cookbooks from the local library. These were either the Americana "Joy of Cooking"/Betty Crocker genre or the French Julia Child/Jacques Pepin variety. Unlike savory cooking, baking humbled me with its exactitude and thrilled me with the unlimited variations that could be coaxed from a few common ingredients: butter, sugar, flour, eggs, leavening.
It also confounded me with its nomenclature.
It took me awhile to figure out that beignets, fritters, crullers, and churros were all essentially the same thing. Or that a profiterole is a petite cream puff, which has nothing to do with puff pastry. Or that a torte is just a cake with a pedigree and a galette is a free-spirited tart. And one that confuses everybody– macaron/macaroons— though they differ by just one letter, they are worlds apart.
What really boggled me is the distinction between a biscuit, a scone, and shortcake. In Britain, a biscuit (from the Latin bis cuit, meaning twice-cooked) refers to what we know is North America as a cookie or cracker. In the US, particularly in the South, a biscuit is a round scone or a shortcake (to "shorten" a dough is to make it tender and flaky by the addition of fat, unlike bread, which has long glutinous starch fibers). A shortcake is a biscuit (or scone) that is split and filled with berries and cream, not to be confused with the sponge-like "shortcakes" that are sold in grocery stores.
Don't even get me started on shortbread.
To add to the confusion, Wiki defines shortcake as: a sweet biscuit (in the American sense: that is, a crumbly, baking soda- or baking powder-leavened bread, known in British English as a scone), and a dessert made with that biscuit.
See what I mean?
What I'm not confused about is why I like biscuits and their ilk. First, there's the contrast between the dry, crunchy exterior and the soft, moist interior. It's like eating cake seamlessly wrapped in pastry. Then there's the flavor alchemy of butter and flour, boosted by buttermilk– sweet and tangy inside, toasty and nutty outside. In the past, I've made biscuits with conventional brown butter (beurre noisette) in an attempt to exploit the toasty flavor. While the flavor was good, the texture seemed to be missing something– the milk solids, no doubt.
And, there was certainly no confusion over what to do with the new brown products: butter, cream, buttermilk. In fact, they seemed custom-made for my favorite buttermilk biscuit recipe that I have tweaked over the years. While I was at it, I fully committed to the power of brown by toasting some of the flour (toasting destroys the starch molecules in flour, leaving it inert) and incorporating piloncillo (deeply-flavored unrefined brown sugar). I was sure that after building such a strong team of Maillard players, that they would tackle the taste buds upon contact.
They didn't.
What they did was play slowly and methodically, overtaking me when I stopped looking. And long after the game should have ended, they were still playing on and on and on…..
Download recipe: Brown butter biscuits
Playing with Fire and Water 
i always thought profiteroles were filled with ice cream while cream puffs were filled with cream
and i though beignets have yeast and are circular ball shaped, while fritters were filled with stuff, and churros were little sticks
and biscuits usually are not sweetened while shortbread is more like a cookie not a biscuit and is sweetened
but thats just what i thought but maybe i am wrong…
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No, you’re right.
Profiteroles are traditionally filled w ice cream, but it is an acceptable term for small cream puffs.
Beignets, fritters, churros, and crullers are all fried doughs, typically pate a choux. Beignets, in New Orleans are made with yeast, in France, they are not. Fritters may or may not have fillings.
Biscuits are not sweetened (though I find a bit of sugar makes the dough more tender), shortcakes sometimes are.
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I just discovered your blog and I’m finding it absolutely fascinating! As a fan of both biscuits and brown flavors, this post speaks loudly to me. 😀 Did you post a method for browning your “stuff”? I saw a reference to a pressure cooker (which I have) but uncovered no more specific info.
And… just so you know… I’ll choose a hot biscuit over much fancier breads (croissants, for example) ANY day. In my mind, scones are biscuits made with sugar (and sometimes wedge-shaped and with eggs). As far as shortbread, in my mind at least, those are cookie-like and not so similar to (American) biscuits, tho the fact that the UK uses the word biscuit where Americans use the word cookie clouds the issue somewhat. 😀
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I did your chicken biscuit (and a bacon version of it as well) and they absolutely rocked… so I’ll definitely be giving this one a try.
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