Skip to main content
Dessert

Scotch Scones

A baked scone made with flour, oatmeal, milk, egg, butter, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Scotch Scones

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift the flour into a bowl, add the salt, and rub in the butter with the oatmeal and ground rice.

  3. Stir in the sugar, soda, and cream of tartar.

  4. Mix in the egg and milk to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into three‑cornered pieces and place them on a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes, brushing with diluted egg yolk and milk halfway through, 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Best flour
Provides the main structure that holds the scones together.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the scones.
Cream of tartar
Acts with the soda to release carbon dioxide, helping the scones rise.
Milk
Moistens the dough so it comes together and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Mix in the egg and milk to form a stiff dough. Mixing too much develops gluten and makes scones tough, while adding too much liquid makes them spread and lose lift. Mix only until the dough just holds together.

“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

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes