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Bread

Plain Buns

A yeast-based dough for soft buns, made with flour, yeast, sugar, milk, butter, and salt, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 good brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the sponge

  1. Mix salt and sugar with flour in a pan, making a hole in the center.

  2. Warm the milk until lukewarm, mix with the yeast, and pour into the center of the flour, stirring to make a thick cream.

  3. Cover the pan with a cloth and let the sponge rise in a warm place for about 14 hours.

Shape and rise

  1. Melt the butter (do not oil it) and stir it into the mixture with enough warm milk to form a soft dough.

  2. Shape the dough into buns and place them on floured tins about 3 inches apart.

  3. Let the buns rise in a warm place until they double in size.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C). Brush with a little milk before they are done and return to the oven to brown.

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 gluten network that gives the buns their structure.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the sponge and dough rise, giving the buns a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Milk
Provides moisture to form the dough and helps the crust brown.
Moist sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise slowly. The long rise lets yeast ferment the flour and sugar slowly, developing flavor and an open crumb. Warm, undisturbed conditions keep the yeast active; a cold spot slows the rise and leaves the dough dense.

“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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