Name: A Good Plain Bun, That May Be Eaten with or Without Toasting and Butter
Ingredients: 4 ounces butter; 2 pounds flour; 4 ounces sugar; 1 nutmeg (optional); a few Jamaica peppers; 2 teaspoons caraway seeds; 1 cup yeast; milk (as needed)

Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Good Plain Bun, That May Be Eaten with or Without Toasting and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the butter into the flour.
Add sugar, nutmeg, Jamaica peppers, and caraway seeds.
Mix the yeast with a spoonful or two of cream and enough milk to form a light dough.
Set the dough to rise in a warm place until the oven is ready.

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.

Nutmeg + carawaytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, pepper, caraway, milk):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Cardamomfits about as well
Turmericfits less well

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