Skip to main content
Dessert

Soda Buns

Soda buns are sweet yeast‑free buns made with flour, milk, butter, sugar, currants, candied peel, lemon extract, egg, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soda Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour and sugar.

  2. Rub in the butter until well mixed.

  3. Add baking soda, candied peel (chopped small), and currants.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg, milk, and lemon extract together.

  5. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking sheet, leaving space between each.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 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. 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Provides the structure that holds the buns together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds richness and structure to the buns.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and softens the texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the dough to produce gas that makes the buns rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the buns brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well combined.. Baking soda reacts as soon as it meets an acid and liquid, so the dough should be mixed promptly and then baked without delay to keep the rise. Overmixing can toughen the texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes