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Dessert

Easter Buns for Poor Children

Sweet buns made with flour, butter, currants, sugar, spices, leavening, and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Easter Buns for Poor Children

44 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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix flour, dripping or butter, currants, sugar, salt, ginger, allspice, tartaric acid, and cream of tartar until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Dissolve carbonate of soda in the warmed milk and add to the mixture, stirring quickly until a firm dough forms.

  2. Divide the dough into 44 equal parts and shape each into a round cake.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven for 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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the buns together.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acids in the dough to release gas, helping the buns rise.
Tartaric acid
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the carbonate of soda to produce lift.
Dripping or butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the dough, also adding richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the carbonate of soda into the milk and dough. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acids as soon as it is wet, so the dough should be stirred quickly and shaped and baked promptly to keep the gas that makes the buns rise.

Swap the currant

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

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

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