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Dessert

Maryland Biscuit

A simple biscuit made with flour, lard, milk, salt, and water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Maryland Biscuit

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and salt.

  3. Cut in the lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Make and bake

  1. Add the milk and mix until just combined.

  2. Add water as necessary to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into biscuits.

  4. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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
Forms the structure of the biscuits as the dough sets in the oven.
Lard
Cut into the flour to create fat pockets that make the biscuits tender and flaky.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture, helping the dough come together.
Salt
Seasons the dough and balances the flavor of the flour and fat.

The step that matters

Cut in the lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Leaving the lard in small, distinct pieces creates layers as it melts in the oven, which gives flaky texture. Overworking it blends the fat into the flour and makes the biscuits dense and tough.

“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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