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Bread

Quite Plain Buns Without Butter

A simple yeast bread bun made without butter in the dough, baked until browned.

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

Quite Plain Buns Without Butter

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 sponge

  1. Dilute the yeast in warm milk until smooth.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a thick batter.

  3. Cover the pan with a double cloth and place it in a warm spot to rise until bubbly.

Make the dough

  1. Add salt, sugar, and enough flour to form a light dough.

  2. Let the dough rise again until it is too firm to mold by hand.

  3. Beat the dough with a strong wooden spoon and place it in buttered cups or pans.

  4. Optionally, sprinkle currants on top before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until the surface is well browned.

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. 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. Milk + flourtop 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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the bun its body.
Milk
Provides moisture and softness while helping the dough stretch and rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Second rise until too firm to mold by hand. Rising too long lets the gluten weaken and the yeast exhaust its food, so the buns can collapse or turn coarse. Stop when the dough is firm enough to hold its shape.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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