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Dessert

Soda Biscuit

A quick oven biscuit made with flour, shortening, salt, baking soda, warm water, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Soda Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Mix the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the shortening into the flour.

  3. Add the salt.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the warm water.

  5. Stir the dissolved baking soda into the sour milk.

  6. Mix the sour milk mixture into the flour mixture.

  7. If needed, add a little more milk, but do not add more baking soda.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough quickly.

  2. Roll out the dough.

  3. Cut the rolled dough into biscuits.

  4. Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven for 20 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the biscuits their body.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to keep the dough tender and flaky.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acid that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas that lifts the dough.

The step that matters

Knead the dough quickly. Overworking dough develops gluten too far, making biscuits tough instead of light. Handle the dough briefly and gently so the biscuits stay tender.

“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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