Skip to main content
Dessert

Drop Biscuits

Drop biscuits are made from sour milk, sugar, baking soda, salt, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Drop Biscuits

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Drop Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Stir in enough flour to create a thick batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into pans.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Break the biscuits apart instead of cutting.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the biscuits.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide, which makes the biscuits rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuit tops brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until just combined. Overmixing the batter develops gluten, which makes the biscuits tough. Mixing only until the flour is incorporated keeps them tender while the baking soda lifts them.

“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