Skip to main content
Main

A Good Plain Bun

A simple yeast bread bun with butter, flour, sugar, optional nutmeg, Jamaica peppers, caraway seeds, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour, sugar, nutmeg, and Jamaica peppers. Add the caraway seeds.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the yeast with a spoonful or two of cream. Combine with enough milk to form a light paste.

  2. Set the mixture to rise in a warm place until the oven is ready.

Bake

  1. Bake on tins until golden brown.

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 + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds richness and tenderness to the bun.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once combined with liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, helping the dough rise.
Caraway seeds
Contribute a distinctive aroma to the bun.

The step that matters

Set the mixture to rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to become active and produce gas. If the dough is too cold it will rise slowly or not at all, and the bun will be dense.

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):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. 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.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes