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Dessert

Buttermilk Scones or Bread

A quick baked buttermilk scone or bread made with flour, salt, soda, sugar, and buttermilk.

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 ↓

Buttermilk Scones or Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and salt.

  3. Combine the carbonate of soda and powdered sugar, then rub into the flour until well blended.

  4. Gradually mix in buttermilk to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough and place it in the oven immediately to prevent heaviness.

  2. Bake for about 45 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.

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. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 scone as the dough sets in the oven.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour to form the dough and its acidity reacts with the carbonate of soda to help rise.
Carbonate of soda
Releases carbon dioxide when acidic buttermilk is present, leavening the scones.

The step that matters

Shape and bake immediately. Once the leavening reacts with the acidic buttermilk, gas begins to escape. Delaying the bake lets the gas dissipate, so the scones rise less and turn out heavy.

“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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