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Bread

Rice Bun

A baked bun made with butter, sugar, all-purpose flour, rice flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Rice Bun

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  2. Rub in the butter until well mixed.

  3. Add the rice flour and sugar, then mix in the eggs and enough milk to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small buns and place them on a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main structure that holds the buns together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the buns rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the mix so it reacts with the baking soda, adding lift.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Eggs
Bind the dough, add moisture, and help set the structure while baking.
Rice flour
Adds a lighter, more tender texture than wheat flour alone.

The step that matters

Rub in the butter until well mixed. Working cold butter evenly into the flour coats the flour particles and limits gluten development, keeping the buns tender rather than tough. Uneven pockets of butter can make some buns greasy and others 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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