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Glazed Currant Buns

Sweet yeast buns enriched with butter and eggs, studded with currants and glazed with cornstarch syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Glazed Currant Buns

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Soften the yeast in ½ cup of scalded and cooled milk, then add to 1 pint of milk.

  2. Stir in about 3 cups of flour and beat until very smooth. Cover and let rise.

  3. When light, add ½ cup sugar, ½ cup softened butter, 1 teaspoon salt, 3 eggs, 1 cup cleaned currants, and about 3 cups flour.

  4. Knead until elastic and set to rise until doubled in bulk.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out into a sheet and cut into rounds.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and let rise until doubled.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 25 minutes.

Glaze

  1. Brush with a mixture of 1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 cup boiling water, sprinkle with granulated sugar, and return to the oven to glaze.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the buns their structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crust brown.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruity bursts throughout the buns.

The step that matters

Knead until elastic, then let rise until doubled. Kneading develops gluten so the dough can trap gas. Letting it fully double gives the buns their light texture; underproofed dough stays dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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