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Denver Biscuits

A biscuit made with milk, mashed potatoes, sugar, lard, yeast, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Denver Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine scalded and cooled milk, mashed potatoes, sugar, melted lard, and dissolved yeast in warm water in a large bowl.

  2. Mix baking powder, baking soda, and salt with enough flour to create a soft batter in another bowl.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, and let the batter rise until it bubbles.

Make the dough

  1. Add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Shape and bake

  1. Pinch off enough dough to shape into biscuits.

  2. Let rise for one hour.

  3. Bake.

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 + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its milk sugars help the biscuits brown.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the dough soft and tender.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands for a tender, flaky crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it bubbles and rises, lightening the biscuits.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the biscuits additional lift.
Flour
Provides the gluten structure that holds the dough and biscuits together.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until it bubbles. Yeast needs time to ferment and produce gas; under-rising leaves dense biscuits, while the stiff dough must be handled gently so it stays tender.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour. 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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