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Dessert

Spanish Buns

A sweet yeast bread with cinnamon, nutmeg, and rose water, baked into buns and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spanish Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces.

  2. Rub the butter into the flour.

  3. Add the sugar.

  4. Beat the eggs until very light.

  5. Stir in the spices and rose-water.

  6. Add enough milk to form a very thick batter.

  7. Mix in the yeast and stir the mixture again.

  8. Let it rise.

Shape and finish

  1. Butter the pans.

  2. Fill the pans three-fourths full with the batter.

  3. Sift sugar over the buns.

  4. Cut the buns into squares with a sharp knife.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the buns together.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture to the batter.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Add enough milk to form a very thick batter. Too much liquid makes the batter loose and unable to hold its shape, while too little leaves the flour dry and the buns dense. The batter should be thick but fully mixed, so the flour is evenly hydrated.

“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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