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Dessert

Soda Biscuit

A quick, lightly baked biscuit made with flour, milk, lard, baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Soda Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the baking powder (or baking soda and cream of tartar) with the flour and sift again.

  3. Rub the lard into the flour mixture.

  4. Grease the baking pans and prepare everything before adding the milk.

Make and bake the biscuits

  1. Add the milk and knead the dough quickly.

  2. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and cut into small rounds.

  3. Bake for about 20 minutes, handling the dough as little and as lightly as possible.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and stays moist.
Lard
Coats the flour particles to tenderize the dough and give a flaky texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the biscuits rise and become light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas, helping the biscuits rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with baking soda to leaven the dough.

The step that matters

Add the milk and knead the dough quickly. Once liquid meets flour, gluten starts to form, and overworking makes the biscuits tough. Quick, light handling keeps them tender, and the leavening gas is released best while the dough is still cold and loosely mixed.

“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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