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Dessert

Mrs. Frost's Biscuits

A quick biscuit recipe using flour, baking powder, lard, and cold milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Mrs. Frost's Biscuits

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 dough

  1. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  2. Mix in the lard thoroughly.

  3. Add cold milk gradually until the dough is soft enough to roll out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into biscuits.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the biscuits rise and become light.
Lard
Coats flour particles to tenderize the dough and adds flakiness and richness.
Cold milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough forms and becomes soft enough to roll out.

The step that matters

Add cold milk gradually. Adding milk slowly lets you stop once the dough is soft but still workable. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and dense, while too little leaves it stiff and crumbly.

“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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