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Hot Cross Buns

A sweet baked bun made with dough, eggs, butter, currants, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Shape and bake

  1. Combine the plain roll dough, 3 eggs, ¼ pound of butter, and 2 pounds of currants in a bowl.

  2. Mould the mixture into round balls and place them on greased baking sheets.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

Glaze and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup of milk with a small handful of sugar and 2 eggs.

  2. Brush the milk mixture over the baked buns.

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. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and enrich it, giving a firmer, richer structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture to the dough and helps the glaze brown and shine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction and caramelisation of sugars in the crust. Stopping too early leaves pale buns with a doughy centre, so the golden colour is the cue that the bake is done.

Swap the currant

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

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

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