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Scotch Scones

A quick biscuit-like scone made with flour, sour milk, and leavening, baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Scotch Scones

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add enough sour milk or buttermilk to make a soft dough and mix with a knife.

  3. Roll out the dough with a little flour, not as thick as for biscuits.

  4. Cut with a biscuit cutter.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake on a soapstone griddle on top of the stove, turning as required.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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 structure of the dough once bound with liquid.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Moistens the flour into a soft dough and reacts with the leavening to lift the scones.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with the baking powder to help the scones rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the scones rise and become light.

The step that matters

Bake on a soapstone griddle on top of the stove, turning as required.. Heat that is too high browns the outside before the centre sets, while heat that is too low dries the scones without lifting them. Steady medium heat and turning help the inside cook through evenly.

“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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