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Scotch Scones

Scotch scones are small, lightly sweetened baked dough pieces made with flour, butter, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Scotch Scones

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix flour and butter in a bowl.

  3. Add salt and sugar to the mixture.

  4. Combine baking soda and cream of tartar in a separate plate.

  5. Add the baking soda mixture to the flour and butter.

  6. Gradually mix in the milk to form a wet dough.

  7. Flour a surface.

  8. Knead the dough until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough in half.

  2. Roll each piece to 1 inch thick, shaping them into rounds.

  3. Cut crosses on the top of each round.

  4. Brush the tops with a mixture of egg yolk and a little milk.

  5. Sprinkle with remaining sugar.

  6. Bake in the preheated oven until dry and lightly 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the scones and helps them crumble softly.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to release gas, helping the scones rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so baking soda produces lift in the scones.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the milk to form a wet dough. Adding milk slowly lets you judge the dough's moisture, since too much liquid makes scones heavy and sticky while too little leaves them dry and crumbly.

“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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