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Dessert

Soda Scones

Soda scones are small, soft baked rounds made with flour, baking soda, tartaric acid, salt, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Soda Scones

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and tartaric acid.

  2. Add buttermilk gradually to form a very soft paste.

  3. Sprinkle flour on a clean surface and turn the paste out onto it.

  4. Roll the paste to less than ½ inch thick and cut into rounds or quarters.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle or hot plate and bake the scones for 5 minutes on each side.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the scones together as they cook.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk and tartaric acid to produce gas that lifts the scones.
Tartaric acid
Acidifies the dough so baking soda releases carbon dioxide for rising.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour into a paste and supplies acid that activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Adding the buttermilk gradually. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets acid and liquid, so the dough should be mixed and shaped quickly. Adding buttermilk slowly keeps the paste soft without overworking the flour, which would toughen the scones.

“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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