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Dessert

A Good 2Jlain Bun

A sweet bread loaf flavored with nutmeg, Jamaica peppers, and caraway seeds, leavened with yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Good 2Jlain Bun

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add sugar, nutmeg, Jamaica peppers, and caraway seeds.

  3. Mix a spoonful or two of cream into the yeast and enough milk to make a light paste.

Rise and bake

  1. Set the mixture to rise by a fire until the oven is ready.

  2. Bake on tins until done.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it coats flour particles and adds tenderness and richness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the bun once mixed with liquid and baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, causing the dough to rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and gains softness.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rise before baking. Yeast needs warmth and time to produce gas. Baking before the dough has risen fully results in a dense bun, so the rise should finish before the tins go into the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, pepper, caraway, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, pepper, caraway, 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.

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