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Dessert

Yeast Powder Biscuit

A biscuit made with flour, salt, butter, baking powder, and milk, baked until golden.

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

Yeast Powder 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.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk.

  3. Mix well.

  4. Let the dough rise in a warm place until noon.

  5. Cut the dough with a knife.

  6. Let the dough rise again until 4 o'clock.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut with a biscuit cutter.

  3. Place a small piece of butter on each biscuit.

  4. Fold each biscuit over like a roll.

  5. Alternatively, stack one roll on top of another with butter in between.

  6. Let the biscuits stand for 2 hours.

  7. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once it is mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the biscuits rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the biscuits tender and flaky as it melts in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Let the biscuits stand for 2 hours. The dough's rising and resting period affects how light the biscuits become. Cold butter pieces need to stay intact so steam can lift the layers during baking.

“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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