Skip to main content
Main

Hot Cross Bunns

A sweet yeast roll with currants, topped with a cross and glazed with a cornstarch glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hot Cross Bunns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve one cake of yeast in one-half cup of luke-warm water. Scald two cups of milk; when cool, add the yeast mixture, two teaspoons of salt, and three tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Make a sponge by adding about three cups of flour. Beat briskly for a few minutes, set aside to rise until light and bubbly.

Enrich and shape

  1. When risen, add two beaten eggs, one-half cup of well-cleaned currants, and one-fourth cup of softened butter. Add enough flour to knead. Let rise twice the bulk.

  2. Roll dough into a sheet, cut into rounds, and place in a pan. When doubled in size, cut a cross on top of each bun with scissors.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake about twenty minutes. Brush tops with a paste made by boiling two teaspoons of cornstarch with one cup of boiling water, first softening the starch with a little cold water, sprinkle with sugar, and dry in the oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

793Calories
28 gProtein
15 gFat
136 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 8 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
Cakenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 gluten, a stretchy network that traps gas and gives the buns their structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it feeds, making the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the crumb as the buns bake.
Milk
Adds tenderness and softness, and its milk sugars help the crust brown.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, sweetens the dough, and adds browning on the surface.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit flavour throughout the dough.

The step that matters

Softening the cornstarch before boiling. Starch clumps when it hits hot liquid directly. Mixing it into cold water first lets the granules disperse, so the boiled paste becomes smooth and glossy instead of lumpy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More hot cross buns recipes

London 3 See all 75 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes