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Breakfast Buns

A quick oven-baked sweet bread made with flour, cornmeal, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and baking powder.

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

Breakfast Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, cornmeal, and baking powder.

  2. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and milk to the butter mixture, then combine with the dry ingredients.

  4. Spoon the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure as the gluten network sets during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set its structure while adding richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the buns rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps them brown as they bake.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients gently. Once the flour meets liquid, gluten begins to develop, so overmixing can make the buns tough. Stir just until no dry flour remains, and the batter's baking powder will still lift it evenly.

“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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