Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓
Baking Powder 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 the dough
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together.
Rub in the butter and lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Add enough sweet milk to form a soft dough, handling it as little as possible.
Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and cut into desired shapes.
Bake
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the structure of the biscuit as its gluten and starch set in the oven.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas when heated, lifting the dough so the biscuits rise and become light.
- Butter
- Stays in solid pieces that melt during baking, creating flaky layers and tenderness.
- Lard
- Coats flour particles and shortens gluten, adding tenderness and flakiness to the crumb.
- Sweet milk
- Hydrates the flour and binds the dough, adding moisture and helping it brown.
The step that matters
Handling the dough as little as possible. Once the milk is added, gluten forms as the flour is worked. Overmixing makes the dough tough and dense, so the dough should be brought together gently and quickly.
“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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