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Dessert

Soda Biscuit

A quick oven biscuit made with flour, milk, lard, baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Soda Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Mix the baking powder (or baking soda and cream of tartar) with the salt and flour, then sift again.

  3. Rub the lard into the flour mixture until well combined.

  4. Grease the baking pans and prepare everything before adding the milk.

Shape and bake

  1. Add the milk and knead the dough quickly.

  2. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and cut into small rounds.

  3. Bake for about 20 minutes, handling the dough as little and lightly as possible.

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).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 main structure of the biscuit as the gluten network sets in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the flour and activates the leavening, binding the dough together.
Lard
Coats the flour particles, keeping the crumb short and tender rather than tough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the wet dough and oven heat, lifting the biscuits as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the biscuits rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to produce gas for rising.

The step that matters

Add the milk and knead the dough quickly. Leavening starts releasing gas once the dough is wet, so the dough should be mixed and shaped quickly. Overworking develops too much gluten, which makes the biscuits 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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