Skip to main content
Dessert

Tea Biscuit

A simple biscuit made with flour, shortening, baking powder, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Tea Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Rub in the shortening.

Shape and bake

  1. Add the milk and the remaining cup of flour to form a soft dough.

  2. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into rounds.

  3. Fold the rounds over and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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
Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to keep the biscuits tender and flaky.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, making the biscuits rise.
Milk
Moistens the flour to form a soft dough and adds richness.

The step that matters

Mixing the dough after adding the milk. Overworking the dough develops gluten, which makes biscuits tough instead of tender. Mix only until a soft dough forms.

“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.

More tea biscuit recipes

Orange 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes