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Dessert

Bath and Cross Buns

A sweet yeast dough bun with powdered sugar, butter, lard, currants, and spices, baked into Bath and Cross varieties.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bath and Cross Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a sponge with the water, yeast, and a little flour; let it prove for 1 hour.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients, except the granulated sugar, and let rise for 2 hours.

Make the Bath Buns

  1. For Bath Buns, use 4 lbs. of dough for every 3 dozen.

  2. Cut out, form, and sprinkle granulated sugar over them.

  3. Let them stand for 20 minutes at 80°F (27°C) and bake for 20 minutes at 475°F (245°C).

  4. When cool, sprinkle with ¾ lb. powdered sugar.

Make the Cross Buns

  1. For Cross Buns, use 2½ lbs. of dough for every 3 dozen.

  2. Cut out, form, and mark a cross on top.

  3. Let rise for 20 minutes at 80°F (27°C) and bake for 20 minutes at 475°F (245°C).

  4. When cool, cover with 1½ lbs. melted powdered sugar.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas during proving and rising, leavening the dough so it becomes light.
Eggs
Add richness, structure, and colour to the enriched dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that help browning and a soft crumb.
Currants
Add fruit sweetness and pockets of juicy flavour throughout the buns.

The step that matters

Proving and rising the dough. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas, and the dough must be left to expand before shaping. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough collapses and loses its shape.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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