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Dessert

Hot Cross Buns

A yeasted sweet bun with a cross on top, often frosted with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the milk, then add the sugar and butter. Let it cool.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, and yeast dissolved in 2 tablespoons of water.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a dough that is not too stiff.

  4. Knead the dough for about 20 minutes and place it in a warm place until it doubles in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Break off pieces to form buns and place them an inch apart on a baking sheet.

  2. Let the buns rise again, then cut a cross on top of each one just before baking.

  3. Bake until golden, then frost the hot buns with XXXX sugar moistened with cream. Optionally, add raisins.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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

Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour to the dough as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Kneading and proofing the dough. Kneading develops gluten so the dough can trap gas, and proofing in a warm place lets the yeast raise it fully. Too little kneading or rising leaves dense buns.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, butter, egg, flour, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg, flour, cream. 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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