Name: Cinnamon Bun
Ingredients: 1 pint milk; ¼ pound butter; 2 eggs; 2 cups sugar; 1 cup yeast; flour (enough to make a dough); butter (for spreading); cinnamon; currants

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 ↓

Cinnamon Bun

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in the milk.
Beat the eggs and stir them into the milk mixture.
Add the sugar and mix well.
Stir in the yeast and enough flour to form a dough.
Let the dough rise overnight.
In the morning, roll out the dough.
Spread with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and currants.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, sugar, flour, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.