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Baking

Biscuits Chauds

A biscuit dough made with buttermilk, butter, eggs, sugar, baking powder, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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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 ↓

Biscuits Chauds

Ingredients

Directions

Make the doughs

  1. In a bowl, mix buttermilk, butter, and baking powder.

  2. Add flour until the dough is workable.

  3. In another bowl, combine beaten eggs, sugar, melted butter, and baking powder.

  4. Mix well and add flour to form a stiff dough.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat together egg, sugar, milk, and melted butter.

  6. Stir in baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  7. In a large pot, melt butter in hot water and dissolve baking soda in sour milk.

  8. Combine all mixtures to form a smooth dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into desired biscuit shapes.

  2. Bake promptly 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. 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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + anisetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk or sour milk
Adds acidity that reacts with the leavening and gives a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough and bakes, lifting the biscuits to rise.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and helps the biscuits brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough bind and set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that helps the biscuits rise.

The step that matters

Bake promptly until golden. Baking powder and baking soda begin releasing gas as soon as they are wet and mixed. Waiting before baking lets that lift escape, so the biscuits come out flatter and denser.

Swap the anise

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (buttermilk, butter, flour, egg, sugar, milk, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Anisethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, butter, flour, egg, sugar, milk, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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