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Madison Biscuit

A potato-based biscuit dough made with flour, yeast, egg, sugar, lard, and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Madison Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine yeast, beaten egg, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Mash the potato and mix it with enough milk to moisten.

  3. Incorporate the potato mixture into the flour as you would for rolls.

  4. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 4 to 6 hours until light.

Shape and rise

  1. Roll the dough thin, handling it as little as possible.

  2. Cut the dough into biscuits and place them in a pan to rise until ready to bake.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Serve immediately after baking.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure as its gluten develops when mixed with liquid.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough together.
Potato
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and helps create a flaky texture.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thin, handling it as little as possible. Overworking dough develops too much gluten, which makes biscuits tough and dense. Gentle handling keeps them tender and lets them rise well in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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