Skip to main content
Dessert

Bran Biscuit

A simple biscuit made with flour, bran, milk, water, yeast, salt, and baking soda, baked in a skillet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Bran Biscuit

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. Combine flour, bran, milk, water, yeast, salt, and baking soda in a bowl.

  2. Mix well and set aside to rise overnight.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease iron skillets with butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into the skillets and bake until golden brown.

  4. Let the biscuits cool, then cut them open and serve with boiling milk and butter.

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 + 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
Provides the main structure of the biscuits as it sets during baking.
Bran
Adds fiber-rich texture and a coarser, nutty crumb to the dough.
Milk
Moistens the dough and adds richness and browning through milk sugars.
Yeast
Ferments during the overnight rest, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the dough to produce gas and help the biscuits lift.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise overnight. Yeast needs time to ferment the dough. A full rest lets it develop gas and flavor, so skipping or shortening it leaves the biscuits dense.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes