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Dessert

Plain Scones with Buttermilk

A simple buttermilk scone made with flour, baking soda, salt, butter, and buttermilk.

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 ↓

Plain Scones with Buttermilk

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. Rub the butter into one part of the flour.

  2. Sift the baking soda and salt into the other part of the flour.

  3. Mix the two parts together and add enough buttermilk to make a smooth dough.

Shape and rest

  1. Divide the dough into 12-ounce pieces and mold them into rounds.

  2. Roll each round out to a thickness of half an inch.

  3. Cut each round crosswise into four pieces.

  4. Place the pieces on pie tins, ensuring they do not touch.

  5. Prick each piece with a fork and let them rise in a warm place for about 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Wash with an egg wash and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + buttermilktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity to produce gas that lifts the scones.
Unsalted butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and a flaky texture.
Buttermilk
Hydrates the flour and adds acidity and moisture to the dough.

The step that matters

Prick each piece with a fork and let them rise. Resting the pieces in a warm place lets the leavening start working before baking, while pricking lets steam escape so the scones rise evenly rather than unevenly.

“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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