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Dessert

Bath Buns

A sweet yeast bread roll flavored with citron and nutmeg, baked into a soft, layered bun.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Ronald · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bath Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the salt, sugar, and grated nutmeg with the flour.

  2. Scald the milk and melt the butter in it.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in a quarter cupful of lukewarm water.

  4. When the scalded milk has become lukewarm, add to it the dissolved yeast and the eggs, which have been well beaten, the yolks and whites separately; then add the flour.

  5. Use more flour than given in the receipt, if necessary, but keep the dough as soft as possible.

  6. Knead it on a board for twenty minutes.

  7. Let it rise overnight in a warm place, well covered.

Shape the buns

  1. In the morning turn it onto the molding board, roll it and rub it lightly with butter, then fold it several times, cut it into pieces the size of a large egg, and mold it into balls.

  2. The folding is to make it peel off in layers when baked, but may be omitted if desired.

  3. Press into the side of each bun, after it is molded, a piece of citron and lump of sugar wet with lemon-juice.

  4. Place the buns in a baking tin and let them rise to more than double their size.

  5. Brush the tops with egg diluted with water to give a brown crust.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake in a moderate oven for half an hour.

  2. When baked, brush over the tops with sugar dissolved in milk, and return to the oven for a few minutes to glaze.

  3. Sprinkle a little powdered sugar over the tops as soon as they are removed from the oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

845Calories
28 gProtein
27 gFat
121 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot 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 Mary Ronald. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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 + 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. Flour + milktop 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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the gas and shape of the buns.
Yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, leavening the buns and giving them a light texture.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour, and help bind the soft dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and, rubbed on the dough, helps the layers separate when baked.
Milk
Moistens the dough and adds softness and browning from its milk sugars.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Keeping the dough soft. Adding too much extra flour makes the dough stiff and dense, so the buns rise less and turn out heavy. Using only as much flour as needed keeps the dough soft enough to rise well.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

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