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Dessert

Spanish Buns

A sweet cinnamon‑flavored bun made with eggs, butter, sugar, milk, flour, and topped with an egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Spanish Buns

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

  4. Add the milk, cinnamon, and flour to the butter mixture, mixing well.

  5. Pour the batter into a shallow pan and bake until done.

Ice and finish

  1. For the icing, mix the egg white with a little sugar and half a teaspoon of cinnamon.

  2. Spread the icing over the top of the baked buns.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, creaming with sugar to trap air for a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the surface as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the baked crumb together.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter bind into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar until creamy traps air in the fat, which helps the buns rise and stay light. Under-beaten butter gives a denser result.

“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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