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Dessert

Milk Biscuits

Milk biscuits are a baked dough made with butter, milk, yeast, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Milk Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the sponge

  1. Stir flour into the milk to form a very thick batter.

  2. Add the yeast to create a sponge.

  3. Cut the butter and let it sit near the fire to melt without getting hot.

  4. Pour the melted butter into the sponge.

Make the dough

  1. Stir in enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Knead the dough well.

  3. Let it rise until perfectly light.

Shape and bake

  1. Butter your tins.

  2. Shape the dough into small cakes.

  3. Let them rise again.

  4. Bake in a very hot oven until light and golden.

  5. Remove from the oven and wash the tops with water.

  6. Serve hot.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Milk
Forms the thick batter and adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise and turn light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough and sets it when baked.

The step that matters

Melt the butter without overheating it. Butter should melt gently, not get hot, because high heat can kill yeast. Hot butter poured into the sponge would stop it from rising properly.

“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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