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Buttermilk Biscuit

A quick oven-baked biscuit made with flour, lard, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk 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 ↓

Buttermilk Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, lard, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add buttermilk until a dough forms.

  3. Roll the dough thin and cut into biscuit shapes.

Bake

  1. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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 + buttermilktop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the biscuit together as it bakes.
Lard
Fat that coats flour particles, tenderizing the crumb and adding flakiness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in buttermilk to release gas, helping the biscuits rise.
Buttermilk
Hydrates the flour to form dough and its acidity activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Gradually add buttermilk until a dough forms. Adding too much liquid at once or overworking the dough develops gluten, making biscuits tough. Stop once the dough just comes together so the biscuits stay tender.

“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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