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Dessert

Potato Scones

A baked potato dough mixed with flour, baking powder, butter, milk, and salt, then rolled, cut, and baked.

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

Potato Scones

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Pass the baked potatoes through a sieve into the flour.

  2. Add baking powder, salt, and butter, then mix well.

  3. Gradually mix in the milk until a dough forms.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into scones.

  2. Bake on a greased griddle until golden.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough that holds the scones together.
Baked potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the scones rise and lighten.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and enriches the flavor.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the mixture into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly. Rolling the dough too thick can leave the centre of the scones doughy while the outside browns too fast. An even, thin roll lets the scones cook through evenly on the griddle.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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