Name: Scotch Currant Buns
Ingredients: 4 pounds bread dough; ½ pound lard; 3 pounds raisins; 2 pounds currants; spice to taste; a little orange peel, cut small

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Scotch Currant Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the lard into the bread dough.
Set aside a piece of dough for the cover.
Thoroughly mix the raisins, currants, and spices into the remaining dough.
Add the orange peel if desired.
Shape the dough into buns and cover with the reserved dough, ensuring no fruit is visible on the outside.

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.

Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,684 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,111 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,398 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).