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Buns

A soft yeast bread bun made with milk, butter, sugar, and flour, baked after two rises.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in lukewarm milk.

  2. Add 1½ cups of flour and beat until smooth.

  3. Add the creamed butter, remaining sugar, flour, and salt.

  4. Knead lightly to keep the dough soft.

  5. Cover and let rise in a warm place, free from drafts, until doubled in bulk, about 1½ hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold into small, round buns and place in well-greased pans, 1 inch apart.

  2. Cover and let rise until light, about 1 hour.

  3. Brush with egg diluted with water and bake for 20 minutes.

  4. Just before removing from the oven, brush with sugar moistened with a little water.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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 as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Its proteins form gluten, giving the dough the structure to hold its risen shape.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and keeps the buns tender.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk sugars that help the crust brown and the dough stay soft.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, adds sweetness, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled. Yeast works fastest at warm temperatures. Cold slows the rise and drafts can cool the surface, while overheating can kill the yeast, so the dough may rise poorly.

“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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