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Bread

French Buns

A yeasted dough made with lard or butter, sweet milk, and baked into buns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

French Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a large bowl.

  2. Rub in the lard and salt until well combined.

  3. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy, then add to the flour mixture along with the yeast.

  4. Gradually add sweet milk until a stiff batter forms.

Rise and work

  1. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 8 to 9 hours.

  2. After rising, work the dough for 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Shape the dough into buns and place them on a baking sheet, ensuring they do not touch.

  3. Bake 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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the buns their structure.
Active dry yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and a tender crumb to the dough.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast, forming the dough and supplying moisture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes golden browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Long rise and working of the dough. The yeast needs the full 8 to 9 hour rise to build gas and flavor, and the extended working develops gluten. Rising too briefly or skipping the working leaves the buns dense.

“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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