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Dessert

Tea Scones

A baked scone made with flour, baking powder, sultanas, sugar, margarine, milk, and salt.

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

Tea Scones

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.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder together.

  2. Rub the margarine into the flour mixture.

  3. Add the cleaned sultanas.

  4. Pour in enough milk to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into small rounds.

  2. Bake on a flat baking sheet at 400°F (200°C) for about 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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 main structure of the scones as its proteins bind with the liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the scones rise and become light.
Margarine
Rubbed into the flour to make the scones tender and crumbly rather than tough.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the scones.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture to the finished scones.

The step that matters

Pour in enough milk to form a soft dough. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and tough, while too little leaves dry, crumbly scones. Add milk gradually and stop once the dough just comes together, since overworking develops gluten and toughens the texture.

“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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