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Oatmeal Biscuits

A baked biscuit made with flour, oatmeal, lard, sugar, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Oatmeal Biscuits

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 ↓

Oatmeal Biscuits

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. Rub the lard into the flour.

  3. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

  4. Add enough milk to form a very stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Sprinkle the board with oatmeal and roll out the dough very thinly.

  2. Cut out rounds with a cutter and prick each with a fork.

  3. Bake for about 12 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the biscuit once mixed with liquid and fat.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and a short, crumbly texture.
Oatmeal
Adds a nutty flavour and a coarse, grainy texture to the biscuit.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lighten the biscuit and help it rise.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture binds into a stiff dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thinly. Thin dough dries and crisps during baking, giving a crisp biscuit. Thicker dough stays soft and dense in the centre, so the biscuit will not turn out as intended.

“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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