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Bread

Plain Buns

A simple yeast bread loaf made with flour, yeast, milk, sugar, butter, and baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Plain Buns

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Plain Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Weigh the flour and set aside half for later.

  2. Mix the remaining flour with yeast and warmed milk to create a sponge.

  3. Cover and let rise for about 1 hour.

Make the dough

  1. Add sugar, warmed butter, and enough warm milk to form a light dough.

  2. Let the dough rise for another hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cakes or buns.

  2. Place them on a buttered baking tray to rise.

  3. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.

  4. Brush the buns with a mixture of milk and sugar.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the structure that the dough's gluten network builds and holds gas bubbles.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the sponge, producing carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture of the buns.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, and helps the buns brown in the oven.
Milk
Supplies moisture to hydrate the flour and form the dough, and adds richness.

The step that matters

Let the sponge and dough rise fully. Yeast needs time to ferment and build gas bubbles that give the buns their light texture. Rising too briefly leaves them dense, while the warm dough needs enough time to double in volume before shaping.

“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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