Skip to main content
Dessert

Tea Biscuits

A simple biscuit made with flour, salt, baking powder, lard, and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tea Biscuits

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. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Sift the dry ingredients to combine well.

Make the dough

  1. Add the lard and mix until crumbly.

  2. Gradually add the milk until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the main structure that holds the risen biscuit together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, causing the biscuits to rise and become light.
Lard
Coats the flour particles, producing a tender, flaky texture.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour hydrates and forms a soft, cohesive dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk until a soft dough forms.. Adding the milk gradually and stopping once the dough just comes together prevents overworking. Excess mixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes biscuits tough rather than 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.

You might also like

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