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Dessert

Almond Buns

Almond buns are sweet, baked buns flavored with almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Buns

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the margarine and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Beat in the egg until the mixture is completely smooth.

  3. Add the flour, cornflour, ground rice, and mix well for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in the baking powder, almond essence, and milk just before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into small fancy bun tins.

  2. Bake until golden brown. Allow to cool before serving.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Margarine
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the buns a tender, rich texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure and moisture as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the buns rise and turn light.
Millennium flour
Provides the main structure once its proteins set during baking.
Ground rice
Adds a slightly crumbly, tender texture compared with wheat flour alone.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking powder just before baking. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet. If the batter waits too long before going into the oven, it loses lift and the buns can turn out dense.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, rice, sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

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