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Dessert

Drop Scones

Drop scones are small cakes made from flour, buttermilk, eggs, and leavening, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Drop Scones

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, buttermilk, cream of tartar, bicarbonate of soda, salt, and eggs until well combined.

Cook

  1. Grease a frying pan or a flat piece of tin with butter.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto the pan.

  3. Cook until the bottoms are brown, then turn them with a knife to brown the other 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the scones together as they set.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that works with the leavening to lighten the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so bicarbonate of soda reacts and produces rising gas.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release carbon dioxide, lifting the scones.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the pan.

The step that matters

Turn the scones at the right time. Flip only once the bottoms are set and browned. Turning too early tears the soft batter, and the leavening gas that gives lift is still forming, so the scones can collapse or come out flat.

“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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