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Dessert

Rice Buns

Rice buns are a sweet, baked bread made with butter, sugar, eggs, ground rice, flour, baking powder, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Rice Buns

about a dozen buns
Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Sift the flour, baking powder, and ground rice together, then stir lightly into the mixture.

  4. If the batter is too stiff, add milk as needed.

Bake

  1. Fill about a dozen well-greased patty pans three-quarters full with the batter.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the buns a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Ground rice
Gives the buns a slightly sandy, tender crumb compared with plain flour.
Flour
Provides structure so the buns hold their shape as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the buns rise and become light.

The step that matters

Adding milk to the batter. Milk should be added only if the batter is too stiff. Too much liquid makes the batter loose and the buns spread or bake heavy, so add it gradually.

“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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