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Rice Buns

Rice buns are small baked buns made with ground rice, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine ½ cup ground rice, 1 tablespoon flour, and ½ teaspoon baking powder.

  2. Add ¼ cup sugar and 2 oz butter, mixing well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Break in 2 eggs and beat the mixture lightly.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease small tins or patty pans with butter.

  2. Fill the tins two-thirds full with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

  4. Turn the buns out of the tins and let them cool on a plate.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 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

Ground rice
Provides a light, slightly crumbly structure in place of wheat flour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the buns structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the buns brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the buns rise and become airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and aids gentle browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Fill the tins two-thirds full. Batter that fills tins too full can overflow, while too little leaves small, dry buns. Leaving room lets the buns rise evenly as the baking powder releases gas.

“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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