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Dessert

Buns for Good-friday

A sweet yeast bun with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, nutmeg, currants, and optional molasses glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Buns for Good-friday

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Combine yeast and flour to make a stiff batter.

  2. Let the batter rise overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, cream together softened butter and sugar until smooth.

  2. Dissolve baking soda and mix it into the sponge.

  3. Add the creamed butter and sugar, then enough flour to form a soft dough.

  4. Knead the dough well.

  5. Cut the dough into shapes.

  6. Let the dough rise for 30 minutes.

  7. Beat eggs separately.

  8. Mix the eggs with milk.

  9. Add the mixture to the sponge.

  10. Cream together butter and sugar.

  11. Add grated nutmeg and yeast.

  12. Form a soft dough with flour.

  13. Let the dough rise until very light.

  14. Fold in currants.

Shape, rise and bake

  1. Shape into buns.

  2. Allow the buns to rise again in the pans, then bake.

  3. Glaze the tops with a mixture of molasses and milk before finishing baking.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Gluten forms the structure that holds the bun shape.
Butter
Fat that tenderises the crumb and adds richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps the crust brown in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture to the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light.. Yeast gas stretches the gluten network and lightens the crumb. Under-rising leaves buns dense, while over-rising weakens the structure so the buns may collapse or bake flat.

Swap the currant

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

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

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