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Dessert

Scones, Drop

Drop scones are small, quick cakes made from flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, egg, and cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Scones, Drop

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt.

  2. Make a well in the center, add the egg, and mix to a smooth batter with the milk.

  3. Dissolve the cream of tartar and baking soda in separate cups with a little milk, then add to the batter and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle and rub it with a piece of suet.

  2. Drop a spoonful of batter onto the griddle.

  3. When set on one side, turn and brown the other side.

  4. Serve hot with butter.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 batter once it is mixed with liquid.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the cooked scones.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with baking soda to produce gas that makes the scones rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce carbon dioxide for lift.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the scones brown on the griddle.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and forms the liquid batter with moisture.

The step that matters

Turn when set on one side. Turning too early, before the bubbles set the surface, can tear the scone and leave batter underneath. Waiting until the top is set lets the structure hold while the second side browns.

“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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