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Dessert

Yankee Tea Oakes

A biscuit made with milk, buttermilk, sugar, salt, baking soda, butter, and flour, baked until brown and crisp.

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 ↓

Yankee Tea Oakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Warm the fresh milk and buttermilk slightly.

  2. Mix in the sugar, salt, baking soda, and 2 tablespoons of melted butter.

  3. Add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out to ½ inch thick.

Bake and baste

  1. Cut the dough into rounds and place them on a shallow buttered baking tin.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 35 minutes.

  3. When they begin to brown, baste them with the remaining 2 tablespoons of melted butter several times until they are brown and crisp.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Buttermilk
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the biscuits rise and gives a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to produce carbon dioxide, lifting the biscuits as they bake.
Fresh milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the rounds together as they bake.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and basting helps the surface brown and crisp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Basting the butter until brown and crisp. Basting too early or too little can leave the tops pale or soft. Brushing melted butter as the surface starts to brown adds fat that promotes even browning and a crisp crust, while the Maillard reaction develops flavor.

“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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