Name: Baking Powder Scones
Ingredients: 1½ pounds all-purpose flour; 1½ ounces fat (butter or shortening); ¾ pint cold milk and water, mixed; 2 teaspoons baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt

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 ↓

Baking Powder Scones

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

1½ pounds all-purpose flour
1½ ounces fat (butter or shortening)
¾ pint cold milk and water, mixed
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Make the dough

Rub the fat into the flour.
Add the milk and water mixture, baking powder, and salt.
Mix with your fingers to form a dough.

Shape and bake

Shape into three rounds, each nearly an inch thick.
Cut each round into four pieces.
Bake immediately.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 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

All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the scones together as they bake.
Fat (butter or shortening): Rubbed into the flour to tenderize the crumb and keep the scones short.
Milk and water: Hydrates the flour to form a dough and adds moisture to the scones.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the dough so the scones rise and become light.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it meets liquid, so waiting lets it lose lift. Baking the shaped dough right away keeps the rise strong and the texture light.

“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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Baking Powder Scones