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Dessert

Cream Biscuit

A baked biscuit made with flour, cream of tartar, sour cream, baking soda, sweet milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream Biscuit

Ingredients

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

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

  2. Sift the flour and cream of tartar together.

Make and bake the biscuits

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream.

  2. Combine the sour cream mixture with the sweet milk and add to the flour mixture.

  3. Stir until just combined.

  4. Spoon the batter into greased tin cups about the size of ordinary teacups.

  5. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Sifted flour
Provides the structure that holds the biscuit together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with baking soda to produce acidity and gas for rising.
Sour cream
Adds acidity and fat, tenderising the crumb and adding moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and cream of tartar to lift the batter.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour into batter.

The step that matters

Stir until just combined. Once liquid meets flour, gluten starts to develop; overmixing makes the biscuits tough, so stop as soon as no dry flour remains.

“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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