Name: Rice Buns
Ingredients: ½ lb ground rice; ½ lb sugar; 2 oz butter; 2 eggs; ½ teaspoon baking powder

Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, combine ½ lb of ground rice and ½ teaspoon of baking powder.
Add ½ lb of sugar and 2 oz of butter, mixing well with a wooden spoon.
Break in 2 eggs and beat the mixture lightly.

Bake and cool

Grease small tins or patty pans with butter.
Fill the tins two-thirds full with the mixture.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.
Turn the buns out of the tins and lean them against a plate to cool.

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.

Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,744 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice: Provides the main body of the buns, giving a dense, crumbly structure.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb, and helps the buns brown.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and add moisture and structure as they set in the oven.
Baking powder: Releases gas when heated, helping the buns rise and lighten.
Sugar: Sweetens the buns and contributes to browning at the edges.

“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.