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Dessert

Virginia Biscuits

A quick biscuit made with flour, lard, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Virginia 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 the dough

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

  2. Rub the lard into the flour in a large bowl.

  3. Sift the baking soda and salt into the flour mixture.

  4. Add the buttermilk and mix with a spoon until combined.

  5. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut out biscuits using a cutter.

  2. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake 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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 of the dough as its proteins set during baking.
Lard
Fat rubbed into the flour that keeps the biscuits tender and flaky.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that makes the biscuits rise.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the dough.

The step that matters

Knead until smooth. Kneading only briefly develops gluten enough to hold the biscuits together. Overworking the dough makes the biscuits tough, so it is best handled gently.

“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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