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Dessert

Buttermilk Biscuit

A quick oven-baked biscuit made with buttermilk, flour, butter, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Buttermilk Biscuit

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the buttermilk, baking soda, and melted butter.

  3. In another bowl, rub the butter into the flour.

  4. Beat the eggs until light and mix with the milk.

  5. Stir the milk and egg mixture into the flour mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Add salt to taste and knead the dough.

  2. Roll the dough thin and cut into biscuits.

  3. Bake for 15 minutes 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.

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

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

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Buttermilk
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to lift the biscuits and gives a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release carbon dioxide, helping the biscuits rise.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour as fat, it creates layers and a flaky, tender texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, and help bind the dough.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour. Butter should stay in small cold pieces coated in flour so it melts during baking and creates steam and layers. If it is overworked into a uniform mix, the biscuits turn out dense rather than flaky.

“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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