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Dessert

Baking Powder Sticks

A simple biscuit made with flour, salt, baking powder, butter, and sweet milk, baked into sticks or twin biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Baking Powder Sticks

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Add enough sweet milk to form a smooth, soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into strips ½ inch wide and 4 inches long.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden, about 10-12 minutes.

  3. For twin biscuits, cut some dough into rounds 1½ inches in diameter.

  4. Brush the tops of half the rounds with butter and place the other rounds on top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create tender layers and a crumbly, rich texture.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form a smooth, soft dough and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Cut in the butter until coarse crumbs form. Butter left in pea-sized pieces melts during baking and creates steam and flaky layers. Over-mixing blends the butter fully into the flour, which makes the sticks tougher and less tender.

“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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