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Hot Gross Buns

A yeast dough bread with butter, sugar, and salt, baked after two rises.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Hot Gross 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. Make a sponge by mixing milk, yeast, and enough flour to create a thick batter.

  2. Add melted butter, sugar, and salt in the morning.

  3. Work in more flour until the dough is manageable.

  4. Knead well.

  5. Cover the dough.

  6. Let it rise.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick.

  2. Cut into round biscuits.

  3. Place the biscuits in a buttered pan.

  4. Let them rise again.

  5. Cut a cross on top of each biscuit.

  6. Bake at 400°F (200°C).

  7. Brush the tops with beaten egg white mixed with sugar.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the sponge batter.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and chew.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before shaping. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas and develop flavour. Shaping or baking underproofed dough gives dense buns, while overproofed dough can collapse.

“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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