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Baking Powder Biscuits

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 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. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together twice.

  2. Cream the butter and lard together, then add to the dry ingredients using your fingertips.

  3. Mix in the milk and water with a knife until you have a very soft dough.

  4. Place the dough on a floured surface without kneading.

  5. Roll out lightly to ¾ inch thick.

Bake

  1. Cut out biscuits and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 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).

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
Provides the main structure once its gluten is developed by the liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough and oven heat, helping the biscuits rise and become light.
Butter
Melts in the oven, creating steam pockets and flaky layers with a rich flavor.
Lard
Adds tenderness and flakiness because it stays solid longer and coats the flour.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds richness, softness and browning from its milk sugars.

The step that matters

Mix in the liquid gently and do not knead. Overworking the very soft dough develops too much gluten, making the biscuits tough instead of tender. Handling it lightly keeps the layers separate and the crumb soft.

“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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