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Baking

Hot Cross Buns

A yeast dough with butter, milk, saffron, sugar, egg, currants, and spices, baked into buns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Hot Cross 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the flour, powdered spice, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Cut in the butter until well combined.

  3. Make a well in the flour.

  4. Pour the yeast and warmed milk colored with saffron into the well.

  5. Mix the surrounding flour with the yeast and milk to form a thin batter.

  6. Sprinkle a little dry flour on top.

  7. Let the batter rise in a warm place.

Finish the dough

  1. Work in sugar.

  2. Work in the egg.

  3. Work in the currants.

  4. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

  5. Cover the dough.

  6. Let it stand for half an hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into buns.

  2. Mark the buns with the back of a knife.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + saffrontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid and yeast.
Butter
Cut into the flour to add fat, tenderness and richness to the buns.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter and dough rise.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruit flavor throughout the buns.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise before adding the rest. The yeast needs a warm place and time to become active and produce gas. If the batter does not rise, the dough will be dense and the buns will not lighten in the oven.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Saffronthe original

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