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Plain Buns

Plain buns are yeast‑leavened bread rolls made with flour, sugar, yeast, milk, butter, and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Plain Buns

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Plain Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Make a cavity in the center of the flour and stir in the yeast and lukewarm milk to make a mixture the thickness of cream.

  2. Cover and let it sit for 2 hours.

  3. Melt the butter and stir it into the mixture along with enough warm milk to form a soft dough.

  4. Dust with a little flour and let the dough rest for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and prepare a baking platter by greasing it with butter.

  2. Shape the dough into buns the size of a large egg and place them on the platter, leaving 3 inches between each bun.

  3. Let the buns rise in a warm place for 30 minutes or until they double in size.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, then brush with milk when removed from the oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the buns' shape and crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form dough and adds softness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the buns rise until doubled. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light, airy crumb. Under-proofed buns stay dense and may collapse or bake unevenly in the oven.

“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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