Skip to main content
Dessert

Cold Biscuits

A quick biscuit dough made with flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, lard, caraway seeds, eggs, and milk, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cold Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in lard until well combined.

  3. Add caraway seeds, beaten eggs, and enough milk to form a smooth, firm dough.

  4. Flour the board, turn out the dough, and knead quickly a few times.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out to ¼ inch thickness and cut into large biscuits.

  2. Prick each biscuit with a fork and place on a greased baking sheet.

  3. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 15 minutes.

  4. Allow to cool and store for later use.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and a crumbly, flaky texture.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the biscuits rise and lighten.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and brings the dough together into a workable mass.

The step that matters

Knead quickly a few times. Overworking wheat dough develops gluten and makes biscuits tough, so brief handling keeps them tender.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes