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Dessert

Blueberry Biscuits

Blueberry biscuits are baked biscuits made with flour, sugar, egg, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, salt, and blueberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Blueberry Biscuits

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 the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg and combine it with the milk and melted butter.

  3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

  4. Gently fold in the blueberries.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the biscuits rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to leaven the batter and adds tang.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds moisture and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Blueberries
Add moisture, sweetness and bursts of fruit flavour throughout the biscuits.

The step that matters

Folding in the blueberries. Overmixing after the wet and dry ingredients combine develops gluten, making the biscuits tough. Mix only until combined and fold the blueberries gently so they stay whole and the batter stays tender.

“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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