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Plain Buns

A simple yeast bread bun made with milk, flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Plain Buns

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 ↓

Plain Buns

10 or 12 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. Dissolve the yeast in the tepid milk.

  2. Gradually mix in the flour and baking powder.

  3. Add the warmed butter, eggs, and pounded sugar.

  4. Knead the mixture until smooth and form it into a ball.

  5. Cover with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the risen dough into 10 or 12 pieces and roll them into balls.

  2. Place the balls on a floured baking tin and flatten them slightly.

  3. Brush the tops with egg yolk and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the buns rise and turn airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the buns their structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, adding extra lift to the buns.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Eggs
Add protein and richness, helping set the structure and colour the crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise. The yeast needs a warm place to become active. If the dough is too cold, it rises slowly or not enough, leaving dense buns. Covering it keeps the surface from drying and forming a skin.

“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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