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Dessert

Potato Scones

Potato scones are baked rounds made from sieved cooked potatoes, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Scones

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Pass the cooked potatoes through a sieve.

  2. Mix in the butter and flour while warm.

  3. Add the salt and roll out the mixture.

  4. Cut into rounds with a pastry cutter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 15 minutes on a girdle or in the oven.

  2. Split open and spread with butter.

  3. Serve hot on a napkin.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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

Cooked potatoes
Provide the starchy base that gives the scones their soft, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and flavour when spread on top.
Flour
Binds the mashed potato into a dough that holds its shape when rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Mix in the butter and flour while warm. Working the flour into warm potato keeps the dough pliable. Overworking it develops gluten and makes the scones tough, while cold potato resists binding.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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