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Dessert

Soda Buns

A sweet roll made with flour, lard, sugar, currants, and baking soda, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Soda 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 the dough

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

  2. Rub the lard into the flour.

  3. Add the sugar, chopped peel, currants, and salt.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in warm milk.

  5. Stir the milk mixture into the dry ingredients along with the beaten eggs.

Bake

  1. Place heaps of the mixture on a greased baking tin.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the buns as the dough sets in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to produce gas that lifts the buns as they bake.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and keeps the crumb soft.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in warm milk. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly through the dough. Undissolved pockets can leave bitter, soapy spots and uneven rising.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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