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Buns, Oommon

Sweet buns flavored with caraway seeds and ginger, made with butter, flour, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Buns, Oommon

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter into the flour in a large bowl.

  2. Add the salt, sugar, caraway seeds, and ginger. Mix well.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk or cream.

  4. Add the dissolved yeast to the mixture. Combine all ingredients into a soft dough.

  5. Do not overwork the dough.

  6. Cover the dough. Let it rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into buns.

  2. Place the buns on a baking tray. Let the buns rise for an additional 15 minutes.

  3. Cover the buns with a cloth.

  4. Brush the tops with warm milk.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) 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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Caraway + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the buns together.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps the crust brown in the oven.
Milk or cream
Moistens the dough and warms the yeast so it can activate.

The step that matters

Do not overwork the dough. Overworking develops too much gluten, making the buns tough and dense rather than light. Mix only until the dough comes together into a soft dough.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, caraway, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, caraway, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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