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Dessert

Currant Lunch Buns

A sweet pastry bun made with flour, currants, lard, sugar, eggs, milk, soda, and tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Currant Lunch Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream the lard, sugar, and eggs together, adding the eggs one at a time and beating well for several minutes.

  2. Sift in the flour, carbonate of soda, and cream of tartar, mixing well with the pint of milk.

  3. Shape the mixture into small buns weighing 2 to 4 ounces each.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Eggs
Bind the creamed fat and sugar and add structure and richness to the dough.
Lard
Creams with the sugar to create a tender, short crumb and a rich texture.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the buns rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with the carbonate of soda, producing lift in the dough.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the buns as it sets during baking.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the buns.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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