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Thin Biscuits

Thin biscuits made with butter, flour, and milk, baked and then dried over a fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Thin Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour until crumbly.

  3. Add enough milk to moisten the mixture.

  4. Roll the dough out as thin as possible.

  5. Prick the biscuits well.

Bake and dry

  1. Bake in the oven for 5 to 6 minutes.

  2. Place the biscuits in front of the fire to dry.

  3. Crisp the biscuits before serving, either in front of the fire or in the oven for 1 minute.

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. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the biscuits short and tender, and helps them crumble.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin biscuits together as they bake.
Milk
Moistens the flour and butter so they bind into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough as thin as possible. Thin dough has little moisture to hold, so it dries and crisps through rather than staying soft in the middle. Uneven thickness leads to some biscuits burning while others stay soft.

“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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