Skip to main content
Dessert

American Pot-Ash Cakes or Biscuits

A quick biscuit made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, salt of tartar, and cold water, baked in a brisk oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

American Pot-Ash Cakes or Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the flour and butter together.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the milk and stir well.

  3. Make a solution of the salt of tartar in the cold water.

  4. Combine the milk mixture and salt solution with the flour mixture.

  5. Work the paste to a good consistency and roll it out.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into cakes or biscuits.

  2. Bake in a brisk oven.

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. Butter + sugartop 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 main structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.
Milk
Supplies moisture and richness to bind the dough.
Salt of tartar or crystal of soda
Alkaline salt that can help the dough rise and brown.

The step that matters

Bake in a brisk oven.. A hot oven sets the outside quickly while steam and gas expand inside, giving the biscuits lift. A cool oven lets the dough spread and bake dense and pale.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes