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Buns

Yeast buns with currants, butter, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Buns

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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine yeast, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add 3 cups of flour to make a sponge and beat briskly for a few minutes.

  3. Set aside to rise until light and bubbly.

  4. Once risen, add beaten eggs, currants, and softened butter.

  5. Knead in enough flour to form a dough and let it rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough into a sheet and cut into rounds.

  2. Place the rounds in a pan and let them rise until doubled in size.

  3. Cut a cross on top of each bun with scissors.

  4. Brush the tops with a paste made from boiling cornstarch in water.

  5. Sprinkle with sugar and dry in the oven.

  6. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the buns their crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the sponge and dough rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the dough set firmly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning to the crust.
Currants
Add sweet, fruity pockets of flavour throughout the buns.

The step that matters

Make the cornstarch paste with boiling water. Cornstarch must be fully cooked in boiling water to thicken into a glossy glaze; undercooked starch stays cloudy and tastes raw.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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