Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make Bath Buns or Cakes

Sweet rolls made with butter, flour, sugar, spices, yeast, milk, and caraway confections.

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

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Bath Buns or Cakes

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 dough

  1. Beat the butter in a bowl until creamy.

  2. Add the flour, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Knead into a light paste and set it by the fire to rise.

  5. Once risen, work in half of the caraway confections and strew the rest on top.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls the size of a French roll.

  2. Place them on a baking sheet, leaving two inches apart.

  3. Set the baking sheet on top of the oven or a hot plate for 20 minutes to prove.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Cinnamon + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with the sugar base, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rising bun shape.
German yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, lifting the dough so the buns rise.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the golden browning of the crust.
Caraway comfits
Add a crunchy sugar coating and a sharp aromatic flavour on top.

The step that matters

Proving the shaped buns. Yeast needs warm, enough time to produce gas before baking. Under-proofed buns stay dense and heavy, while over-proofed buns can collapse or lose their shape in the oven.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, 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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes