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Dessert

Baking Powder Biscuits

A simple biscuit made with flour, baking powder, salt, shortening, and milk, 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 milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baking Powder Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients.

  2. Chop in the shortening with a knife until it resembles fine meal.

  3. Add about half the milk, then more as needed to make a soft dough.

  4. Turn the dough onto a floured board and toss until coated with flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out to about ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut with a biscuit cutter and place close together on a baking pan.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for fifteen minutes.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, making the biscuits rise and become light.
Shortening
Coats flour particles and melts in the oven, creating a tender, flaky texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Chop in the shortening until fine meal forms. Shortening must stay distributed as small pieces in the flour. Overworking it blends it in fully, which reduces flakiness and makes the biscuits tougher.

“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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