Name: Scones, Barley-meal
Ingredients: 2 pounds barley meal; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ¾ teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; buttermilk (enough to make a soft dough)

Why it works: Cream and buttermilk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 674 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scones, Barley-meal

Ingredients

2 pounds barley meal
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon cream of tartar
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
buttermilk (enough to make a soft dough)

Directions

Make the dough

Mix together the barley meal, baking soda, cream of tartar, and coarse sea salt.
Add enough buttermilk to form a nice soft dough.

Shape and cook

Sprinkle some barley meal on a baking board and roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.
Cut the dough into three pieces.
Bake on a moderately hot griddle until 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.

Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together674 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Barley + buttermilktop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together37 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Barley + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together301 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Barley meal: Forms the body of the scones, giving a coarse, hearty structure.
Baking soda: Reacts with the cream of tartar and buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Cream of tartar: Acts with the baking soda to provide rising and a slight tang.
Buttermilk: Moistens the dough and gives it acidity that activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Bake on a moderately hot griddle until golden. If the griddle is too cool, the scones rise slowly and turn dense before browning; if too hot, the outsides scorch before the centres set. Moderate heat lets the rise finish and the surface brown evenly.

“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.

Buttermilk Pie12 recipes

Barley Muffins6 recipes

White Cake431 recipes

Pound Cake373 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Scones, Barley-meal