Skip to main content
Dessert

Milk Biscuits

Milk biscuits are small cakes made from a yeast dough with butter and milk.

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

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 ↓

Milk Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA very quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Stir flour into the milk to form a very thick batter and add the yeast to create a sponge.

  2. Cut the butter and let it sit near the fire to melt without getting hot.

  3. Pour the melted butter into the sponge and stir in enough flour to form a dough.

  4. Knead the dough well and let it rise until perfectly light.

Shape and bake

  1. Butter your tins and shape the dough into small cakes, allowing them to rise again.

  2. Bake the cakes in a 400°F (200°C) oven until light, then wash the tops with water and serve hot.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps the gas from rising.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps form the thick starting batter.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until perfectly light. Yeast gas must be trapped in a well-developed dough to make it light. Rising too little leaves the biscuits dense, while rising too long lets the structure collapse.

“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.

More milk biscuits recipes

Sour 13 See all 50 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes