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Dessert

Denver Biscuits

A biscuit made with mashed potatoes, sweet milk, lard, yeast, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Denver Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes, sugar, and lard until well combined.

  2. Scald the milk and add it to the mixture.

  3. Sift flour with the baking powder and baking soda.

  4. Add the sifted flour mixture to the dough until it resembles cake batter.

  5. Soak the yeast in a little warm water.

  6. Add the soaked yeast to the mixture last.

  7. Let the dough stand for six hours.

  8. Mix in more flour until the dough is like bread dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

  2. Butter the dough.

  3. Fold one half of the dough over the other.

  4. Cut out biscuits using a biscuit cutter.

  5. Let the biscuits rise until light.

  6. Bake the biscuits.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 biscuits together as the dough sets.
Lard
Fat that coats flour particles, giving the biscuits a tender, flaky texture.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, lifting the dough so the biscuits rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, adding lift to the biscuits.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps brown the crust.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the biscuits rise until light. Yeast and leavening gas need time to expand the dough. If the biscuits are baked before they become light, they stay dense and heavy instead of airy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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