Skip to main content
Bread

To Make Buns

A yeast roll flavored with allspice, cinnamon, mace, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Buns

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.

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, and mace in a bowl.

  2. Melt butter in milk and add to the dry ingredients.

  3. Dissolve yeast in a little warm milk and mix into the dough.

  4. Knead into a light paste and let it rise in a warm place.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into round rolls and place on floured baking sheets, ensuring they are spaced apart.

  2. Cross the rolls before baking and brush with milk and sugar.

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

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 dough together and sets when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps the dough brown when baked.
German yeast
Produces gas during rising, making the dough light and open.
Pounded lump sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas steadily. If the dough is too cold it rises slowly and stays dense, while overheating can kill the yeast and stop the rise.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More buns recipes

Hot Cross 75Bath 63Spanish 50Currant 29Plain 29Rice 28 See all 6 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes