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Dessert

Plain Baking-powder Biscuit

A simple biscuit made with flour, baking powder, shortening, salt, and liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Baking-powder Biscuit

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Cut the shortening into the flour mixture using a knife or pastry cutter until it resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Add the liquid gradually, mixing until just combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into small biscuits.

  2. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the biscuits as its proteins set during baking.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to create tender, flaky layers as it stays solid during mixing.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, causing the biscuits to rise.
Liquid (milk or water)
Hydrates the flour to form a cohesive dough and creates steam that aids lift.

The step that matters

Cutting in the shortening. If the shortening is overworked or melts into the flour, the dough loses its flaky layers and bakes up dense. Stopping at coarse crumbs keeps pockets of fat intact.

“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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