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Dessert

Soda Biscuits

A quick biscuit made with flour, butter, lard, salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, and milk.

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

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 ↓

Soda Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the cream of tartar with the flour.

  2. Rub the butter and lard thoroughly into the flour.

Mix and shape

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and mix all ingredients together.

  2. Roll out the dough, adding as little flour as possible.

Bake

  1. Cut with a biscuit cutter and bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Butter and lard
Coat the flour to keep the biscuits tender and flaky.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to produce gas that makes the biscuits rise.
Cream of tartar
Supplies the acid that reacts with baking soda to leaven the dough.
Milk
Provides the moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling out with as little extra flour as possible. Extra flour dries the dough and raises the proportion of flour to liquid, which makes biscuits tougher and less tender. Handling the dough gently and briefly also keeps it from toughening through gluten development.

“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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