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Dessert

Southern Soda Biscuit

A quick, fluffy biscuit made with all-purpose flour, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Southern Soda 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Cut in the lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Stir in the buttermilk until just combined.

  4. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead gently.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out to about ½ inch thick and cut into biscuits.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes 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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Buttermilk
Moistens the dough and reacts with baking soda to help the biscuits rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the biscuits.
Lard
Cut into the flour to create fat pockets that make the biscuits tender and flaky.

The step that matters

Stir in the buttermilk until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes biscuits tough and dense rather than tender. Mixing only until the dough comes together keeps them light.

“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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