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Dessert

Yankee Biscuits

Yankee biscuits are made from flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, water or milk, optional lard or butter, and baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Yankee Biscuits

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 the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar with 1 quart of flour.

  3. If desired, add lard or butter.

  4. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a little water or milk.

  5. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into cakes.

  2. Bake immediately 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 main structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Acidic component that reacts with baking soda to produce gas for rising.
Baking soda
Alkaline base that reacts with the acid to leaven the dough and aid browning.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes to flakiness and flavor.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after combining. Baking soda and cream of tartar begin reacting as soon as they are wet, so the gas that lifts the biscuits is released quickly. Delaying the bake lets it escape, leaving flatter, denser biscuits.

“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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