Skip to main content
Main

Buns with Yeast

Yeast buns made with flour, sugar, milk, eggs, butter, currants or raisins, and German yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Buns with Yeast

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. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, and yeast.

  2. Warm the milk and add it to the dry ingredients.

  3. Beat in the eggs and melted butter until smooth.

  4. Fold in currants or raisins.

  5. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Shape the dough into buns and place them on a baking sheet.

  3. Brush the tops with beaten egg or a mixture of sugar and water.

  4. Dust the buns with sugar.

  5. Bake for 10 minutes, adjusting time based on size.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Forms the gluten network that gives the buns their structure.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough, giving a tender crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat, tenderness and flavor to the crumb.
Currants or raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the buns.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs a warm place and enough time to produce gas; underproofed dough bakes up dense, while the rise sets the light texture of the buns.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

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