Name: Another Kind of Babas. No. 2.
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; 4 ounces butter; 2 pennyweights French yeast; 2 ounces sugar; 3 eggs; 4 ounces sultanas; 4 ounces citron peel; 1 pint milk

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Another Kind of Babas. No. 2.

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

In a large bowl, mix the flour, butter, yeast, sugar, eggs, sultanas, citron peel, and milk until well combined.
Knead the mixture until smooth.

Bake and serve

Shape the dough into buns and place them in a greased baking dish.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.
Let cool before serving.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main structure of the dough as its proteins bond during kneading.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour in the finished buns.
Yeast: Produces gases that make the dough rise and become light.
Eggs: Add structure, richness and moisture, and help bind the dough.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps hydrate the flour into a workable dough.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the baked buns.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking too briefly leaves the centre doughy, while overbaking dries the buns. Golden colour signals that the surface sugars have browned and the crumb has set.

“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.

White Cake431 recipes

Pound Cake373 recipes

Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes

Spice Cake344 recipes

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Another Kind of Babas. No. 2.