Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓
Cream-o'-Tartar or Sour-Milk 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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Rub the butter and salt into the sifted pastry flour.
Make and shape the dough
Mix the baking soda into the sour milk until it bubbles.
Quickly combine the sour milk mixture with the flour until a soft dough forms.
Roll the dough lightly and cut into rounds with a biscuit cutter.
Bake
Bake for 10 minutes or until golden.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Pastry flour
- Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and helps create flaky layers.
- Sour milk
- Supplies acidity that reacts with baking soda to produce gas for rising.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide, lifting the biscuits.
The step that matters
Quickly combine the sour milk mixture with the flour. Once the baking soda and acid react, the gas escapes over time. Mixing quickly and handling the dough lightly keeps the gas trapped and the gluten tender, so the biscuits rise well and stay soft.
“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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