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Dessert

Girdle Scones

Scones made with gluten flour, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, buttermilk, and optional salt or saccharin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Girdle 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

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

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the gluten flour and other dry ingredients.

  2. Add buttermilk to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into scones, breakfast rolls, or twists.

  2. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + buttermilktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Gluten flour
Provides the structure that holds the scones together as they bake.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds fat that tenderizes and enriches the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar and buttermilk to produce gas that makes the scones rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that reacts with the baking soda to help the scones rise.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity to form the dough and react with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Adding the buttermilk to form a soft dough. Too much liquid or overworking the dough develops gluten and makes scones tough. Stir only until the dough just holds together, so the leavening gas is trapped in a tender crumb.

“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 scones recipes

Scotch 46Cream 23Soda 21Potato 19Brown 11Drop 11 See all 51 →

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