Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Buns

A sweet yeast dough with currants, lemon zest, and nutmeg, baked into buns and finished with egg wash and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix thoroughly.

  3. Incorporate 2 cups of flour, then the lukewarm milk, followed by the remaining 4 cups of flour.

  4. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Beat the mixture for 15 minutes, cover, and let it rise.

  6. Once risen, stir in the floured currants, nutmeg, lemon rind, and half the lemon juice.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut with a medium-sized biscuit cutter.

  2. Place half the buns in greased biscuit pans, leaving space between them.

  3. Top with the remaining buns, making pairs, and let rise until very light.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

  5. After baking, brush the tops with egg white and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the buns their structure.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds softness to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light. Yeast gas expands the gluten network, so under-proofed buns stay dense while over-proofed buns may collapse in the oven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, lemon, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes