Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Bath Buns
Ingredients
Directions
Make a hole in the middle of the flour and add the yeast.
Warm the milk to blood temperature and pour it over the yeast.
Mix with about one-third of the flour and let it rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Add the cold butter, eggs, and caraway seeds, then mix in the remaining flour.
Let the dough rise in a warm place for a short time.
Flatten the dough on a surface and sprinkle with sugar.
Roll or chop the dough to mix in the sugar.
Let it rise again in the pan for about 15 minutes.
Shape into buns and place on a buttered baking sheet.
Sprinkle sugar on top and add half a dozen comfits to each bun.
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.
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Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,435 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
Swap the caraway
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter, egg, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Carawaythe original
- Jalapenofits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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