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Potato Scones

Potato scones are fried dough made from mashed potatoes, flour, baking powder, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Scones

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mash the cold potatoes.

  2. Sift the baking powder and salt into the flour.

  3. Mix the mashed potatoes with the flour mixture and add milk to form a dough similar to biscuit dough.

  4. Turn the dough out onto a board and divide it into four pieces.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape each piece into a round case with your hands.

  2. Roll out to 1 inch thick.

  3. Cut the rolled dough into four pieces.

  4. Fry until light brown.

  5. Let stand in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for ten minutes.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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

Potatoes
Add moisture and starch that give the scones a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it is shaped and cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the scones rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the mixture into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Roll out to 1 inch thick. Dough that is rolled too thin or unevenly will cook unevenly and dry out, while an even thickness lets the centre cook through as the outside browns.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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