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Dessert

Graham Soda Biscuits

A quick Graham flour biscuit made with soda, buttermilk, and beef drippings or butter.

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 ↓

Graham Soda 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 the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine Graham flour with beef drippings or butter.

  2. Mix buttermilk and cold water together.

  3. Add baking soda to the liquid mixture.

  4. Knead the dough until stiff and well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to a thin layer.

  2. Cut into biscuits and bake quickly in the preheated oven.

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).

  2. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + buttermilktop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together76 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Graham flour
Forms the main structure of the biscuits and gives them their coarse, nutty texture.
Beef drippings or butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and helps it brown in the oven.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with baking soda to help the biscuits rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that leavens the biscuits.

The step that matters

Add baking soda to the liquid mixture. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets acid. Once the dough is mixed, it should be shaped and baked promptly, so the gas is trapped before it escapes and the biscuits rise well.

“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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