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Dessert

Spanish Buns for Tea

A sweet, almond-flavored tea bun made with butter, cream, flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, and almond water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Buns for Tea

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift the baking powder with the flour.

  3. Beat the eggs separately.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the cream and flour alternately with the egg whites.

  4. Mix in the almond water thoroughly.

  5. Pour the batter into a buttered pan and bake until golden.

Bake and serve

  1. Cut into squares to serve.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide structure and richness as the batter sets, and add moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps create a golden browned crust.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the buns together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the buns rise and become light.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and flour alternately with the egg whites. Folding gently and alternating the wet and dry parts keeps the air beaten into the egg whites. Overmixing would deflate the batter and toughen the crumb as gluten develops.

“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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