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Buttermilk Biscuit

A quick biscuit made with flour, salt, lard, 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.

Make the dough

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

  2. Rub the ingredients together until smooth.

  3. Gradually mix in enough buttermilk to form a thin, easily handled dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into biscuits.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) 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.

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
Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Lard
Fat that is rubbed into the flour, keeping the biscuits tender and flaky.
Buttermilk
Moistens the dough and reacts with the baking soda to help the biscuits rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the biscuits.

The step that matters

Rub the ingredients together until smooth. Working the fat into the flour in a controlled way keeps it in small pieces; overworking the dough develops gluten and makes biscuits tough rather than 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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