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Maryland Biscuits

Maryland biscuits are small, buttery biscuits made with flour, butter, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Maryland Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add salt and enough milk to form a stiff dough.

Knead and pound

  1. Knead the dough thoroughly.

  2. Pound the dough with a rolling pin.

  3. Break the dough into pieces, then pound the pieces.

  4. Knead again for 2-3 hours until smooth and light.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small biscuits.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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. 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).

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 structure of the biscuits as its proteins develop into gluten when worked with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the flour, giving the biscuits a tender, short texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it binds into dough and adds moisture that helps the biscuits brown.

The step that matters

Knead again for 2-3 hours until smooth and light.. Kneading and pounding develop gluten, which gives the dough its structure and rise. Working the dough until it is smooth and elastic matters, because too little kneading leaves it crumbly and weak, while the dough's texture depends on how well the gluten has formed.

“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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