Name: Soda Biscuit
Ingredients: 1 quart all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 2 heaping teaspoons cream of tartar; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Soda Biscuit

Ingredients

1 quart all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 heaping teaspoons cream of tartar
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).
In a bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

Shape

Roll the dough thin and cut it into desired shapes.
Stack the cut biscuits on top of each other before placing them on a baking pan.

Bake

Bake 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.

Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, 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 biscuit together as it bakes.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, helping the biscuits rise.
Cream of tartar: Acts as an acid that reacts with the baking soda to lighten the texture.

“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.