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Dessert

Sour Cream Biscuit

A quick biscuit made with sour cream, flour, baking powder, baking soda, butter or lard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sour Cream Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Cut in the butter or lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Make the dough

  1. In a separate bowl, dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream.

  2. Add the sour cream mixture to the flour mixture and stir until combined.

  3. Roll the dough out thin and cut into desired shapes.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the biscuit as its proteins hydrate and set in the oven.
Butter or lard
Cut into the flour as solid pieces that melt during baking, creating flaky layers and tenderness.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and fat for tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to release carbon dioxide, helping the biscuits rise.
Baking powder
Provides additional leavening gas so the biscuits rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Cut in the butter or lard until coarse crumbs form. Leaving the fat in small, cold-looking pieces rather than fully blended into the flour creates separate layers that steam apart as they bake, giving flakiness. Overworking the dough melts or smears the fat and makes 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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