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Oatmeal Biscuits

A quick baked biscuit made with flour, oatmeal, sugar, lard or butter, soda, egg, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Oatmeal Biscuits

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Oatmeal Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Melt the lard or butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, oatmeal, castor sugar, and carbonate of soda.

  3. Stir in the melted lard or butter.

  4. In a cup, mix a tablespoon of cold water with the egg and beat slightly.

  5. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Flour a board and turn the dough out onto it.

  2. Roll out the dough as thin as possible using a floured rolling pin.

  3. Use a floured tumbler to cut the dough into biscuits.

  4. Grease a baking tin with butter and place the biscuits on it.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  6. Remove the biscuits from the tin and let them cool before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure so the biscuits hold their shape when rolled and baked.
Lard or butter
Melted fat that adds tenderness and crispness to the biscuits.
Oatmeal
Adds a nutty, grainy texture and body to the dough.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown during baking.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to the biscuits.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the dough to lift it slightly and encourage browning.

The step that matters

Roll the dough as thin as possible. Thin dough bakes quickly and crisply all the way through. Thick dough stays soft and dense in the centre, so the biscuits will not turn out as crisp as intended.

“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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