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Dessert

Soda Biscuit

Soda biscuit is a quick baked biscuit made with flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, sweet milk, 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: 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 ↓

Soda 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 the dough

  1. Rub the cream of tartar into the flour.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk.

  3. Mix the milk mixture with the flour and cream of tartar.

  4. Add the butter or lard and salt, and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Shape the dough and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Cream of tartar
Reacts with baking soda to produce carbon dioxide, helping the biscuit rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Provides the alkali that reacts with the cream of tartar, releasing gas for lift and aiding browning.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the biscuit its body once baked.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and dissolves the baking soda, adding moisture and tenderness.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands, producing a tender, flaky crumb.

The step that matters

Mix the milk mixture with the flour and cream of tartar. The baking soda and cream of tartar must react while the dough is wet and being combined, releasing gas for rise. Mixing too long or too hard develops gluten and toughens the biscuit, so combine just until the dough comes together.

“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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