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Bread

Flour Raised with Soda

Soda biscuits made from flour, soda, baking powder, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Abel, Mary Hinman, b. 1850 · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 122,858 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: egg

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Stir flour, soda, baking powder, salt, butter (or lard or suet) together in a chopping bowl, leaving out shortening and milk.

  2. Chop in cold shortening until the mixture is fine and well mixed.

  3. Add milk a little at a time, still mixing with the chopping knife.

Shape and bake

  1. Turn the dough onto a board and shape it with as little mixing as possible.

  2. Roll the dough thick.

  3. Cut the dough into biscuits with a cutter.

  4. Bake the biscuits until browned.

  5. Serve the biscuits warm with butter.

By Abel, Mary Hinman, b. 1850. 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

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

  4. Milk + teatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Flour + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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 that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the biscuits rise and become light.
Soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas, helping the biscuits rise.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the dough while adding moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the biscuits tender and helps them brown.

The step that matters

Turn the dough onto a board and shape it with as little mixing as possible.. Overworking wheat flour dough develops gluten, which makes biscuits tough. Handling it gently keeps them tender and flaky.

“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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