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Dessert

Rich Buns

Sweet buns made with flour, currants, rose water, and caraway comfits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rich 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. Mix flour, powdered sugar, grated nutmeg, and currants in a bowl.

  2. Beat yeast, eggs, melted butter, and rose water together.

  3. Knead the mixture into a light dough.

  4. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small buns.

  2. Brush the tops with egg yolk.

  3. Sift powdered sugar over them.

  4. Sprinkle with caraway comfits.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the buns together.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough, with yolk giving a glossy browned top.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise for 1 hour. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and expand the dough. Rising too short leaves dense buns, while the dough must still be handled gently so the trapped gas is not lost.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, butter, rose):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, butter, rose. 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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