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Bread

Buns, Plain

A simple yeast bread bun made with flour, yeast, milk, sugar, butter, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Buns, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Set the flour to rise with the yeast in warm milk.

  2. After rising, mix in the sifted sugar and melted butter.

  3. Add the salt, coriander or carraway seeds, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into buns and place them on a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Brush the buns with warm milk before baking.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Coriander + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and softness, tenderizing the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and feeds the yeast, aiding browning.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, butter, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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