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Dessert

Drop Biscuit

Drop biscuits are quick, fluffy biscuits made with cornmeal, flour, butter, lard, buttermilk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Drop Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a quart measure, add ½ cup cornmeal and fill with white flour.

  3. Sift and rub in the butter, lard, salt, and sugar thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in warm water and stir it into the buttermilk.

  2. Combine the buttermilk mixture with the flour mixture and beat well.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot muffin tins or gem pans.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.

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).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

White flour
Provides the main structure that sets the biscuit crumb as it bakes.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that react with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce carbon dioxide, causing the biscuits to rise.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, tenderizing the crumb and helping browning.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the biscuits tender and helps them brown.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarser texture and a distinct corn flavor to the biscuits.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into hot pans. Hot tins start the bottoms cooking immediately, helping the biscuits rise quickly and brown evenly. Cold pans let the leavening lose gas before the structure sets.

“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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