Name: Baking Powder Biscuit
Ingredients: 1 quart sifted flour; 1 pint milk; 2 teaspoons baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baking Powder Biscuit

Ingredients

1 quart sifted flour
1 pint milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Mix the dough

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Gradually add the milk and mix until just combined.

Shape and bake

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into muffin rings.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 biscuits as its proteins and starches set when baked.
Milk: Hydrates the flour to form a dough and adds moisture and browning through milk sugars.
Baking powder: Releases gas when moistened and heated, leavening the biscuits so they rise and become light.