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A leavened biscuit, bolls, and muffin recipe using flour, water or milk, butter, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Bee Ad— Biscuits, Bolls, Muffins, Etc.

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 flour, water or milk, and a pinch of coarse sea salt in a bowl and let it rise overnight.

  2. In the morning, melt the butter and beat the eggs well before adding them to the mixture.

  3. If the batter is sour, dissolve a little baking soda in water and stir it in, allowing it to rise before baking.

  4. Knead the dough well, using minimal flour, until it is light and smooth.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and handle the dough quickly, placing it in the oven immediately after it reaches the right lightness.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rise.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough and give it structure.
Baking soda
Neutralises sourness in the batter and helps the biscuits rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Baking the dough immediately after it reaches the right lightness. Once the dough has risen to the right lightness, it can deflate if left waiting. Putting it straight into the hot oven lets the leavening give a good rise and set the crumb.

“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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