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Dessert

Bath Buns

Sweet buns made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, caraway seeds, candied citron, yeast, milk, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bath 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.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour, adding a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Mix the warm milk with the yeast, strain, and pour it into the middle of the flour.

  3. Cover and set it before the fire to rise.

  4. When sufficiently risen, add the sugar, caraway seeds, well-beaten eggs, and thinly sliced citron.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into buns and place them on baking tins.

  2. Let them rise for about 15 minutes.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. When done, brush them with beaten egg and sift sugar on top.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps gas as it rises.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour of the buns.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour, and help bind the dough.
German yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown in the oven.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the dough a soft, tender texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise before shaping. The yeast needs warm, sufficient time to ferment fully; under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the gas it traps gives the buns their lightness.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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