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Maryland Biscuit

A simple lard biscuit made with flour, salt, lard, and ice water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Maryland Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and salt.

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

  3. Add ice water gradually to form a stiff dough.

  4. Beat the dough with a meat beater until well blistered.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into biscuits by hand, pressing until thin.

  2. Prick each biscuit with a fork.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 starch and gluten structure that holds the biscuits together.
Lard
Cut into the flour to create flaky layers and a tender, short texture.
Ice water
Moistens the flour into a dough while staying cold, keeping the fat from melting early.

The step that matters

Beating the dough until well blistered. Beating works the gluten and traps air, giving the biscuits body and a blistered surface. Under-beating leaves them dense, while the cold fat must stay firm so it creates flakes rather than melting into the dough.

“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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