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Dessert

Scotch Scones

A quick griddle scone made with flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter, lard, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Scotch Scones

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat a griddle over medium heat.

  2. In a bowl, rub the butter and lard into the flour.

  3. Add baking powder, sugar, and salt, then mix well.

  4. Gradually add milk to form a batter.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake on the griddle until golden brown.

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. 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).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the scones as the dough sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the scones rise.
Butter and lard
Fat rubbed into flour tenderises the texture and adds richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a workable dough and adds moisture.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Bake on the griddle until golden brown. The griddle needs to be properly preheated so the scones cook through and brown evenly. Browning comes from heat reacting with sugars and proteins on the surface, so too low a heat leaves them pale and doughy inside.

“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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