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Dessert

Soots Bun

A sweet raisin and currant bun baked with butter, spices, and a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Soots Bun

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pan

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub the butter or dripping into the flour and baking powder until crumbly. Mix in enough water to form a firm paste, then roll it out.

  3. Grease a cake pan and line it with the paste, reserving some for the top.

Make the filling

  1. In a large basin, combine the flour, sugar, raisins, currants, orange peel, almonds, ginger, cinnamon, Jamaica pepper, black pepper, carbonate of soda, and cream of tartar. Mix thoroughly with your hands, then add milk until moistened.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture into the lined pan, smooth the top, and wet the edges. Cover with the reserved paste, prick it all over with a fork, and brush with a little egg. Bake in the oven for about 3 hours.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the paste and the bulk of the dough that holds the fruit together.
Butter or dripping
Rubbed into the flour to make the paste crumbly and tender.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the bun.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the bun.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the bun rises and lightens.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, raisin, orange, almond, ginger):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, orange, almond, ginger. 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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