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Dessert

Soda Scones

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

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 basin, mix the flour, salt, carbonate of soda, and tartaric acid.

  2. Make a very soft paste with buttermilk.

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

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the paste to less than ½ inch thick and cut into rounds.

  2. 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
Forms the structure that holds the scones together as they cook.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid and buttermilk to produce gas that makes the scones rise.
Tartaric acid
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the carbonate of soda to release carbon dioxide.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour into a soft paste and adds acidity that helps the rise.

The step that matters

Roll the paste to less than ½ inch thick. Rolling too thick stops the centre from cooking through on the griddle, while the leavening starts working immediately after mixing, so the dough should be shaped and cooked promptly.

“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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