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Dessert

Tea Biscuit

A yeast-based biscuit dough made with milk, flour, salt, olive butter, and yeast, baked until golden.

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 ↓

Tea Biscuit

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.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk and let it cool.

  2. Add salt, yeast, and olive butter to the milk and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour and beat the mixture thoroughly.

  4. Cover and let it stand overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add enough flour to make a soft dough.

  2. Knead the dough for 10 minutes on a floured surface.

  3. Pound the dough with a potato masher for 15 minutes.

  4. Set the dough aside to rise in a warm place (around 72°F).

Shape and bake

  1. Once risen, roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut with a round cutter and place in a greased baking pan.

  3. Let the biscuits stand for 1 hour.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 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. 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. Olive + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,828 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Olive butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and carries flavour.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter and dough.

The step that matters

Adding flour in the morning. Flour must be added gradually until the dough is soft but still workable. Too much flour makes the dough stiff, which limits gas retention and yields a dense biscuit.

“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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