Skip to main content
Dessert

A Good Light Bun

A yeast-leavened sweet bun with currants, sugar, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A Good Light Bun

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Break the butter into small pieces and mix it with the flour.

  2. Stir the yeast into the warm milk and add it to the flour mixture.

  3. Let the mixture rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, or until very light.

  4. Whisk the eggs and mix in a few tablespoons of warm milk, then strain and add to the dough.

  5. Mix in the sugar, currants, and lemon rind (or nutmeg or candied orange rind).

  6. Let the dough rise again for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Beat the dough lightly with a wooden spoon, then transfer it to a buttered pan.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for nearly 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Provides the structure that holds the bun together as the dough rises and bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the crumb as the bun bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the crumb.
Pale brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruity bursts of flavour throughout the bun.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light. Yeast needs a warm place and enough time to produce gas; under-proofed dough bakes dense because the gas has not expanded the gluten network enough to lift the bun.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More currant bun recipes

Scotch 5 See all 12 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes