I looked up US southern biscuits and compared with the recipe for scones that most Aussies grow up with, from the Commonsense Cookbook.
The only differences there are the US ones use buttermilk instead of milk and they use twice as much fat i.e. an extra two tablespoons of shortening as well as two tablespoons of butter.
So vastly different to the taste, but so similar?..Odd!
My other question, What is shortening in USA? I thought it was a culinario-scientifico name for butter
P.S. Biscuit means twice cooked. I.E. the Greeks are right as far as that goes.
Shortening is edible fat. It’s almost always hydrogenated vegetable oil, in this country, although lard and other animal fats have been used, as well as some of the heavier vegetable fats (palm oil, coconut oil). Shortening is never butter, as butter is not pure fat and has very different cooking characteristics.
Yes, extra fat will make the biscuit taste very different, as well as changing the crumb. And, FYI, buttermilk (in the U.S., at least) is just sour milk; no one has actually sold the liquid residue of butter-making for a long time (at least not the big dairies).
Are you asking why is there such a big difference in taste with a small difference in ingedients?
Shortening is a solid fat made from vegetable oil. Hydrogenation of the oil raises its melting point.
Gluten forms a 3D network of protein linkages within the dough. It is formed when flour is moistened - it gives bread and biscuits mechanical strength.
You can add shortening or butter to dough to act as a physical barrier to the gluten network that forms in flour dough. This is to ‘shorten’ the flour. The result is a flaky and tender biscuit.
Adding a little more oil in the short US biscuits may overload the gluten network, and have a significant affect on texture and mouthfeel.
Maybe oil-gluten to strength, is analogous to an acid-base relationship with pH.
So as not to open a new, but related thread, there is a difference between buttermilk and spoiled (soured) milk. Buttermilk has artificially induced bacteria; whereas, sour milk’s bacteria is natural. They taste decidedly different. I like buttermilk pancakes and, in fact, make them myself. I also use buttermilk on cereals. It tastes good, but not as good as kefir or yogurt, which also contains cultures.
So, kefir, buttermilk, and sour milk all contain bacteria. Why do they taste so different. I guess it’s because of the bacteria. Kefir and buttermilk have artificially induced cultures, and they appear to be different. Does anyone have the straight dope?
I didn’t mean to imply that buttermilk is spoiled, only that it’s sour – i.e., it contains lactic acid. Although it’s the result of bacterial fermentation, I don’t know that it necessarily contains live cultures when it’s sold. I may have been a bit dismissive in my description because I really, really dislike buttermilk. Buttermilk pancakes, biscuits, or dressing, on the other hand, would be an entirely different matter.