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Excellent Baking Powder Biscuits

A biscuit dough made with all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, lard, butter, and sweet milk, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Excellent Baking Powder Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour and baking powder together three times, adding the salt.

  2. Combine the lard and butter in equal parts and rub into the flour until well mixed.

  3. Add the milk and mix to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out the dough thinly, fold it over, and roll slightly again.

Bake

  1. Cut out biscuits and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, making the biscuits rise and become light.
Lard
Coats flour particles to create a tender, flaky texture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and flakiness, and helps browning in the oven.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough thinly, fold it over, and roll slightly again.. Folding and re-rolling creates layers of fat and dough. Handling the dough gently and not overworking it keeps the biscuits tender rather than tough, since gluten develops with excess mixing and kneading.

“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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