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Dessert

Scotch Scones

A quick scone made with sifted flour, salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, and buttermilk, baked on a griddle.

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 ↓

Scotch Scones

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda together.

  2. Add buttermilk gradually until a dough forms.

Bake

  1. Shape the dough and bake on a griddle 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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the scones together as they cook.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk and cream of tartar to produce lift.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that reacts with the baking soda, helping the scones rise.
Buttermilk
Supplies moisture to form the dough and acid to activate the baking soda.

The step that matters

Add the buttermilk gradually. Adding liquid slowly lets you stop once the dough just holds together. Too much buttermilk makes the dough sticky and hard to shape, and overworking the dough develops gluten, which makes scones tough.

“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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