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Dessert

Common Soda Biscuit

A quick biscuit made with baking soda, flour, butter or lard, salt, 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 ↓

Common Soda 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. Sift the baking soda thoroughly into the flour.

  2. Rub in the butter or lard until well combined.

  3. Mix in enough buttermilk to form a nice soft dough, handling it as little as possible.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut into small cakes using a cake cutter.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until light and golden.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + buttermilktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provides the structure that holds the biscuit together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acid to release gas, helping the biscuits rise.
Butter or lard
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, which tenderises the crumb and gives flakiness.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour to form the dough and supplies the acid that activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Handling the dough as little as possible. Overworking the dough develops gluten, making the biscuits tough and dense rather than tender. Mixing only until the dough just comes together keeps the texture light.

“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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