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Bread

Spanish Bun

A sweet, spiced loaf made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, milk and spices, baked in loaf tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spanish Bun

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spanish Bun

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the eggs.

  3. Add the milk and spices.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add to the milk.

  5. Sift in the flour.

  6. Add vinegar last and beat well.

Bake

  1. Bake in loaf tins.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the vinegar and cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the loaf.
Vinegar
Acidic reaction with baking soda helps the bread rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Add vinegar last and beat well. Vinegar reacts with the baking soda to release carbon dioxide bubbles. Adding it last and beating briefly keeps those bubbles in the batter, so the loaf rises before the reaction is spent in the oven.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cinnamon, allspice, milk, butter. 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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