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Biscuits, Bath Olivers

A yeast-based biscuit dough made with flour, yeast, sugar, milk, butter, and egg yolk, baked after two rises.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Biscuits, Bath Olivers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a pan, cream together the yeast and sugar, then mix with the tepid milk.

  2. Pour this mixture into a well in the flour, draw some flour into it, cover, and let it rise for 1.5 hours.

  3. Work the risen mixture into the rest of the flour with the butter until smooth.

  4. Let the dough rise again for 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thinly and stamp out biscuits with a cutter the size of a teacup.

  2. Prick the biscuits well with a fork to allow steam to escape.

  3. Place the biscuits on flat baking tins sprinkled with water.

  4. Brush the biscuits with beaten egg yolk mixed with milk.

  5. Let the tins sit in a warm place for 30 minutes, then bake in a slack oven.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets during baking.
German yeast
Produces gas during the two rises, making the dough light and airy.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives the biscuits a rich flavour.
Tepid milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the dough moisture and softness.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top, it promotes browning and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Prick the biscuits well with a fork. Pricking lets steam escape during baking so the biscuits stay flat and crisp rather than puffing or blistering unevenly.

“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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