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Dessert

Plum Buns, Without Yeast, Plain

A yeast-free, sweet bun made with flour, baking soda, currants, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Buns, Without Yeast, Plain

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar thoroughly.

  2. Rub the mixture and salt into the flour.

  3. Work in the softened butter.

  4. Add the sugar, currants, and caraway seeds if using.

  5. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture.

  6. Pour in the beaten eggs and lukewarm milk.

  7. Stir quickly with a knife until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Mould the dough into buns and place on a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes or until golden.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the buns once combined with the liquids.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the buns without yeast.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the baking soda, providing the rise.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds softness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir quickly with a knife until a dough forms. Baking soda and cream of tartar begin reacting as soon as they are wet, so their gas is released early. Overmixing develops gluten and toughens the buns, so the dough should be combined briefly and shaped without delay.

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, butter, sugar, currant, egg, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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