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Dessert

Maryland Biscuits

A biscuit made with flour, milk, butter, and salt, baked until golden.

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

Maryland Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until well mixed.

  3. Gradually add enough lukewarm milk to form a very stiff dough.

  4. Knead the dough thoroughly, then pound it with a rolling pin.

  5. Break the dough into pieces, pound and knead again for 2-3 hours until smooth and light.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small biscuits.

  2. Bake the biscuits in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the biscuits their structure.
Unsalted butter
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and a flaky texture.
Lukewarm milk
Hydrates the flour to bind the dough and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Pound and knead the dough for 2-3 hours. Long pounding and kneading develops the gluten in the stiff dough, which makes the biscuits smooth, light and firm. Stopping too early leaves a dense, crumbly result.

“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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