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Quite Plain Buns Without Butter

A simple yeast bread bun made without butter, rising twice and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Quite Plain Buns Without Butter

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 sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast in warm milk until smooth.

  2. Mix with enough flour to form a thick batter.

  3. Cover with a cloth and let rise in a warm place until bubbly.

Make the dough

  1. Add salt, sugar, and enough flour to form a light dough.

  2. Let the dough rise again until it doubles in size.

  3. Beat the dough with a wooden spoon and place in buttered cups or pans.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

  2. Optionally, sprinkle currants on top before baking.

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. Milk + flourtop 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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Milk and flour 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the buns rise and become light.
All-purpose flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the buns their structure and chew.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning during baking.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast, adding moisture and softness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until it doubles. The second rise builds the gas and structure that make the buns light. Under-proofing leaves them dense, while over-proofing can cause them to collapse or taste sour.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, sugar. 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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