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Dessert

Butter Biscuit

A soft, yeasted biscuit made with flour, milk, yeast, butter, and baked at 400°F.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Butter 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.

Make the sponge

  1. Sift 1 pint of flour into a bowl.

  2. Make a hollow in the center and add 1 cup of warm milk and ½ cup of yeast.

  3. Mix into a sponge and let it rise.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add ½ lb of melted butter.

  2. Knead in enough flour to form a soft dough, using another cup of warm milk or water as needed.

  3. Roll out the dough and place it in a pan to rise.

Bake

  1. Bake in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 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 structure of the dough once kneaded in.
Yeast
Produces gas during the sponge and rise, lightening the dough.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour and helps the yeast become active.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge rise before adding butter. The yeast needs time to ferment the sponge and build gas and flavor. Adding fat too early can slow gluten development and the rise, so the sponge should be allowed to rise fully first.

“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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