Skip to main content
Main

Hot Cross Buns

A sweet yeast bread with currants, marked with a cross, baked at 400°F.

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 ↓

Hot Cross 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, powdered spice, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Make a hollow in the flour.

  4. Pour in the yeast and warm milk colored with saffron.

  5. Mix to a thin batter.

  6. Sprinkle with dry flour.

  7. Let rise in a warm place.

  8. Work in sugar.

  9. Work in beaten egg.

  10. Work in currants.

  11. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

  12. Cover.

  13. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into buns.

  2. Mark them with the back of a knife.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + saffrontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 together as they rise.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, making the crumb softer and richer.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, causing the dough to rise and become airy.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough, giving structure and a tender crumb.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the buns.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and helps the dough come together.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to ferment properly. If the dough is too cold, it rises slowly or not enough, leaving dense buns; if too hot, the yeast can die and the dough won't rise.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, sugar, egg, currant. 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 hot cross buns recipes

London 3 See all 75 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes