Skip to main content
Dessert

Scotch Scones

A quick oat and flour scone baked on a griddle, served hot with butter or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Scotch Scones

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the Scotch oatmeal and white flour twice with salt and baking powder.

  2. Melt the butter and sugar in the boiling milk.

Make the dough

  1. Pour the milk mixture into the whole flour and stir to form a soft dough.

  2. Turn the dough onto a floured board and roll it out to less than 1/8 inch thick.

  3. Cut into rounds with a biscuit cutter.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake on a hot griddle, turning when the bottom is brown.

  2. Serve hot with butter, or enjoy cold.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Scotch oatmeal
Provides the bulk and the oaty texture of the scone dough.
White flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together when rolled and cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the scones rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and oats into a soft dough.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness and helps the surface brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Turning when the bottom is brown. If the griddle is too hot, the bottoms brown quickly while the centers stay doughy. Turning at the first clear browning lets the heat cook the middle 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes