Name: Bath Buns
Ingredients: 4 cups all-purpose flour; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons sugar; ½ cup butter, softened; 6 large eggs; ½ cup cream; ⅓ cup orange-flower water; 4 ounces candied peel, chopped; 2 ounces cherry-kernel comfits

Why it works: Orange and cherry work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 689 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bath Buns

Ingredients

Directions

In a warm place, set the sponge by mixing a portion of the flour with water and letting it rise until tripled in size.
On a clean surface, form a hollow with the remaining flour, add salt and sugar, and pour in a little water to dissolve.
Add butter and eggs, then mix everything together with your hands until smooth.
Once the sponge has risen, combine it gently with the flour mixture.
Prepare a wooden bowl with a napkin and flour, then transfer the dough into it.
Cover the dough with flour and the corners of the napkin, and let it rest in a cool place overnight.
The next day, take 1 pound of the dough, add cream, orange-flower water, candied peel, and cherry-kernel comfits, and mix well.
Divide the mixture into twelve equal parts, shape them into round balls, and press them gently.

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.

Orange + cherrytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together689 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, cream, cherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.