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Dessert

Soda Biscuit

A quick, lightly leavened biscuit made with flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, milk, lard, and baked at 400°F.

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

Soda Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Sift the flour, baking powder (or cream of tartar), baking soda, and salt together.

  3. Rub the lard into the flour mixture.

  4. Grease the baking pans.

Shape and bake

  1. Add the milk and knead quickly.

  2. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick.

  3. Cut with a small round cutter and place in the pans.

  4. Bake for 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. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the biscuit as its gluten and starch set in the oven.
Lard
Coats flour particles to tenderize the crumb and keep the biscuit short.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together and bakes moist.
Baking powder
Releases carbon dioxide gas that makes the biscuit rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic components to produce gas for rising and light browning.

The step that matters

Add the milk and knead quickly. Overworking wheat dough develops gluten, which toughens the biscuit. A quick, light knead keeps the texture tender and flaky.

“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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