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Dessert

Port Hope Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Port Hope Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the butter and milk, mixing until smooth.

  4. Stir in the cream of tartar and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is thin enough to roll out.

  6. Flavor the dough with nutmeg.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the biscuits.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help the biscuits rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together when rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly. The dough must be rolled very thin so the biscuits bake crisp and evenly. Thick dough stays soft in the center and can burn at the edges before it is fully baked. Adding flour gradually keeps it workable without making it tough.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream, flour):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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