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Dessert

Hot Cross Buns

A sweet yeast bread with a cross on top, made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, and a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sponge

  1. Prepare a sponge as you would for bread.

  2. The next morning, beat the eggs and mix in the butter and sugar until just combined.

Make the syrup and eggs

  1. In a saucepan, combine the loaf sugar and water over medium heat, stirring until dissolved.

  2. In a bowl, whisk the 6 eggs.

  3. Once the sugar mixture boils, pour it gently over the whisked eggs while continuously beating until cool.

Mix and bake

  1. Stir the cooled mixture into the flour until combined.

  2. Line your baking frames with paper and fill them three-quarters full with the batter.

  3. Sift sugar over the top and bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter so the buns hold their shape when baked.
Sponge
Its fermentation gives the dough its rise and a light, airy crumb.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the buns brown and stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the eggs. Pour gently while beating constantly. Pouring too fast or without beating can scramble the eggs in the hot syrup, leaving the batter lumpy and uneven in texture.

“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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