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Dessert

Richer Buns

A sweet yeast bun with currants, candied peel, eggs, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Richer Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Melt the butter and sugar in ½ pint of new milk.

  2. Mix ½ pint of warm milk with 1 cup of yeast.

  3. Strain the mixture into the melted butter and sugar.

  4. Add enough flour to create a thin batter.

  5. Pour the batter into a well in the remaining 2 pounds of flour.

  6. Sprinkle flour over the mixture.

  7. Cover and let rise.

Make the dough

  1. If using spices, add them to the flour before mixing.

  2. For each pound of flour, add 4 beaten eggs and ½ ounce of caraway seeds.

  3. Mix the eggs and sugar with the sponge.

  4. Add warm milk to achieve a soft paste.

  5. Add the currants and candied peel to the dough last.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop pieces of the paste onto buttered tins.

  2. Allow the pieces to take their own shape.

  3. Sprinkle caraway confections on top.

  4. Bake for 15 minutes.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the structure that holds the buns together as the dough sets.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough, giving a softer crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the finished buns.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the sponge rise and lightens the buns.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruity pockets that stay moist during baking.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise before mixing in the rest. The yeast needs time to ferment the thin batter and build gas and flavour. If the sponge is rushed or the yeast is weak, the buns will be dense and under-risen.

Swap the currant

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

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

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