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Dessert

Drop Scones

Drop scones are small, quick pancakes made with flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, sugar, egg, buttermilk, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Drop Scones

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the egg and enough buttermilk to make a smooth batter.

  3. Beat well and let the mixture stand for a little while.

Cook and serve

  1. Grease a hot griddle or frying pan with a bit of suet.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto the griddle.

  3. When the scones are brown underneath and covered with bubbles on top, turn them with a knife.

  4. Brown the other side.

  5. Butter the scones and serve cold.

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).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as the scones set.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the scones.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk to produce gas that makes the scones rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with the baking soda to help the scones rise.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderising the batter and activating the leavening.

The step that matters

Turning the scones. Turn them only once brown underneath and bubbling on top. Bubbles show the leavening has set the structure, so turning earlier can deflate them and leave them flat and doughy.

“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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