Skip to main content
Dessert

Oatmeal Biscuits

A quick biscuit made with flour, oatmeal, sugar, lard or butter, soda, egg, and cold water, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Make 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 teacup, mix the cold water and egg together.

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

Shape the biscuits

  1. Flour a surface 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.

Bake and serve

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

  2. 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
Provides the main structure that holds the biscuits together.
Oatmeal
Adds a hearty, slightly crumbly texture and nutty flavour.
Lard or butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a short, crisp bite.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to hold the biscuits together.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with other ingredients to give a small amount of lift and browning.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Roll the dough as thin as possible. Thin dough bakes evenly and crisps through, while thick dough stays soft and doughy in the centre. Flouring the surface and pin keeps the dough from sticking and tearing.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes