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Dessert

Scotch Scones

A quick oven-baked scone made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and optional salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Scotch Scones

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the butter into half of the flour.

  3. Sift the sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda into the other half of the flour.

  4. Mix the two flour mixtures together and add milk to form a medium dough.

  5. Knead the dough for a couple of minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into 12-ounce pieces and shape them into rounds.

  2. Roll out each piece to the size of layer cake tins.

  3. Cut each round into four pieces and place them on baking sheets with cut sides facing up.

  4. Prick each piece with a fork and let them rest in a warm, damp place for 30 minutes.

  5. Brush the tops with an egg wash and bake until golden brown.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the scones together as they bake.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough forms and adds moisture and browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the scones rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the baking soda to produce lift.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tops brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Mixing and kneading the dough briefly. Overworking wheat flour develops gluten, which makes scones tough. Mix only until the dough just comes together and knead only a couple of minutes, so the scones stay tender.

“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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