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Dessert

Spanish Buns

A sweet yeast bread flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, rose water, and butter, topped 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

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces and rub it into the flour.

  2. Add the sugar and beat the eggs until light.

  3. Stir in the spices and rose water, then add enough milk to form a very thick batter.

  4. Mix in the yeast.

Rise and fill the pans

  1. The next morning, stir the batter again and let it rise a second time.

  2. Butter your pans and fill them three-quarters full with the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Once baked and cooled, sift sugar over the buns and cut them into squares.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 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
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter bind and set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas during the second rise so the buns become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the buns brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise a second time. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light texture. Rising too briefly leaves the buns dense, while over-rising can collapse the structure.

“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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