Recipe: Real Irish Scones (2024)

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updated May 2, 2019

Slathered with unsalted butter, honey, and a pinch of sea salt, these authentic scones will transport you to Ireland.

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I once took a work trip to do nothing but learn about Irish milk, cheese, and butter. Lucky for me, the first thing I ate when I arrived, jet-lagged and haggard, was a scone. I still remember this particular scone because it was fluffier and richer than any scone I’d ever had. After spending a few minutes under the spell of this little morsel, I pulled myself together and asked the chef if it wasn’t in fact a biscuit. He insisted, these were his Irish scones, made with Irish butter and milk, and served with a soft pat of butter on the side.

If it really was a scone, it was the best scone I’d ever had, so I asked the chef for his recipe and spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out what, in fact, is a real Irish scone.

In the days that followed, I probably ate a dozen scones made from different recipes, and each was unique. I asked chefs, innkeepers, grandmothers, and dairy owners for their methods, tips, and secrets.

Some said buttermilk is key. Others said, “Absolutely no buttermilk!” Most used “self-raising” flour (“self-rising” if you’re stateside), although some used “cream flour” (all-purpose) and some used cake flour. Some said the butter should be cold and others said to work softened butter into the mix. Those who insisted a traditional soda scone was the only way to go had no butter in their recipe at all.

My understanding of the difference between a biscuit and a scone is that a scone has a little sugar (this recipe has sugar) and an egg. But not everyone I spoke to in Ireland put an egg in their dough.

There are a few things all the Irish people I spoke to agreed on about scones: they are best served freshly baked, warm from the oven, with butter, homemade preserves, honey, and even some cream. No one seemed particular about the shape or the time of day best for a scone. Sultana (raisin) or plain scones for breakfast, savory scones with soup at lunch, and sweet scones at teatime.

So back home, I put together a recipe using all the information I’d collected, plus my own bias for those first scones I gobbled up in Ireland. They’re easy to make — from pulling out the ingredients to that first hot bite, only about 20 minutes will pass — but they rely heavily, in my opinion, on the quality of the ingredients, so choose wisely.

I made my own self-rising flour by adding baking powder to fresh all-purpose flour and opted for softened Irish butter. (Kerrygold is the brand most easy to track down in the States. I met many of the cows that are responsible for this butter and I can tell you they have a pretty cushy life: there is no confinement farming in Ireland and all of their cows are 100% grass-fed, which explains the vibrant yellow hue of the butter.)

Sure, these scones are more biscuit-like than what you might expect from a traditional Irish scone, but what I learned is that there are infinite definitions of what a real Irish scone is. The memory of those very first fluffy dream-cloud scones I had when I sat down to my first Irish meal is so strong that, to me, these are now the most true Irish scones. Slathered with unsalted butter, honey, and a pinch of sea salt, and I’m pretty much transported to another place right here in my stateside kitchen.

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