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Maryland Biscuit

A quick, stiff dough biscuit made with flour, water, lard, milk, and salt, baked until light brown.

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

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 the dough

  1. Mix the salt and flour together.

  2. Rub the lard into the flour evenly with your hands.

  3. Combine the milk and water in a pitcher, then gradually add it to the flour while stirring and kneading.

  4. Add just enough liquid to moisten the flour; the dough should be very stiff.

  5. Knead the dough for 5 minutes.

  6. Beat the dough with a rolling pin for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into small round biscuits, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Prick each biscuit in 3 places with a fork.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 25 minutes until light brown outside and white and flaky inside.

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 main structure of the biscuit once mixed with liquid and worked into dough.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to coat it, shortening the dough and producing a flaky texture.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping bind the dough and contributing to browning in the oven.
Water
Adds the liquid needed to moisten the flour into a stiff dough.

The step that matters

Add just enough liquid to moisten the flour. Too much liquid makes the dough soft and sticky, which yields tough, dense biscuits rather than a stiff, flaky dough. Adding liquid gradually lets you stop once the flour is just moistened.

“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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