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Hot Baking Powder Biscuits

A quick biscuit made with flour, baking powder, salt, lard, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Hot Baking Powder 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. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Cut in the lard and butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Add the milk (or water) gradually to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking pan or roll it out and cut into shapes.

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 main structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the biscuits rise and become light.
Lard
Coats flour particles and creates flaky layers by staying solid until baking.
Butter
Adds flavour and flakiness, creating layers as it melts in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Cutting in the fat. Fat should stay in small, cold pieces rather than fully blending into the flour. As the fat melts in the oven it leaves pockets that become flaky layers. Overworking the mixture or letting the fat soften can make the biscuits dense.

“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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