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Dessert

Yirginia Biscuits

Biscuits made with flour, lard, soda, salt, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Yirginia Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub a teaspoon of lard into a quart of flour.

  2. Sift a teaspoon of soda into the flour.

  3. Add one teaspoon of salt and one pint of buttermilk to moisten the flour.

  4. Beat the mixture with a spoon until thoroughly mixed.

  5. Turn it out on a biscuit board and work until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut it out with a cutter and bake with steady heat.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

768Calories
21 gProtein
22 gFat
120 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Lard1 tbsp (12.8g)115
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour, it adds tenderness and a flaky texture.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour to form a dough and adds a slight tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that helps the biscuits rise.

The step that matters

Working the dough until smooth. Overworking flour dough develops gluten and makes biscuits tough. Kneading only enough to bring the dough together keeps them tender, so the handling should stop once it is smooth.

“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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