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Buns

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,377 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Work in the currants, nutmeg or cinnamon, and butter into the dough.

  2. Let the dough rise again until light.

  3. Roll out the dough and shape it into small cakes.

  4. Place the cakes on a baking sheet with space between them.

  5. Beat the egg white with sugar and glaze the buns with it.

  6. For Hot Cross Buns, mark a cross on top with a knife.

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. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

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

  3. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 currant

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

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

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

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