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Dessert

Raspberry or Lemon Buns

A sweet bun made with flour, ground rice, butter, sugar, eggs, and filled with lemon cheese or raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Raspberry or Lemon Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour and ground rice.

  2. Add the sugar and baking powder, then mix in the beaten eggs.

  3. Shape the mixture into buns and place them on greased baking sheets.

Fill and bake

  1. Make a hole in the top of each bun and fill it with lemon cheese or jam.

  2. Brush the tops with egg or milk and bake 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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter or lard
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and a crumbly texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the buns rise and become light.
Ground rice
Gives a fine, crisp-tender crumb that differs from flour alone.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tops brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Make a hole in the top of each bun and fill it with lemon cheese or jam.. A well-formed hollow holds the filling in place; if the dough is too thin or the hollow is too shallow, the filling can spill or burn during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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