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Dessert

American Buns

A sweet roll made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, cream of tartar, sultanas, raisins, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

American Buns

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour, sugar, cream of tartar, and caraway seeds.

  4. Add the sultanas and raisins, then pour in the milk.

  5. Finally, fold in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the mixture into buns and place them on a floured baking sheet.

  2. Glaze the tops with egg white and bake for about 25 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Raisin + carawaytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the buns together as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough, helping leavening work and keeping the crumb tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps them brown during baking.

The step that matters

Beating the butter until creamy. Beating softened butter with sugar traps air in the fat, which lightens the texture. Under-beaten butter leaves a dense bun, and melted butter loses this air.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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