Skip to main content
Dessert

Easter Buns

A sweet yeast dough bun flavored with nutmeg, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Easter 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. Combine sweet milk and yeast to make a thick batter.

  2. Let the batter sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, add sugar, melted butter, grated nutmeg, and salt.

  4. Add enough flour to the dough.

  5. Roll out the dough to biscuit consistency and knead well.

  6. Let the dough rise for 5 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut the dough into round cakes.

  3. Place the cakes in a buttered baking pan.

  4. Let the cakes stand for 30 minutes.

  5. Make a cross on each cake with a knife.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  7. Brush the tops with a mixture of beaten egg white and 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the bread's shape and texture.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise for 5 hours. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas for the dough to expand properly. Rising too short leaves a dense bun, while over-proofing can weaken the structure.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, sugar, 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes