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Baking Powder Biscuit

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Baking Powder Biscuit

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 ↓

Baking Powder Biscuit

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).

  2. In a bowl, mix 3 cups of flour, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, and ½ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Melt ⅓ cup of butter and set aside.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Add the melted butter and 1⅓ cups of milk to the flour mixture, stirring with a spoon.

  2. Flour a clean surface and turn the dough onto it.

  3. Gently mix the dough with a spoon and knife, then gather it into a ball with your hands.

  4. Roll the dough lightly and cut out biscuits.

Bake

  1. Grease a baking pan with butter and place the biscuits in it.

  2. Bake immediately until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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 set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, making the biscuits rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes to browning.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a dough and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Bake immediately until golden brown. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet and heated, so waiting after mixing lets it lose lift. Once the dough is shaped, it should go into the hot oven without delay for the best rise.

“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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