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Dessert

Leamington Buns

Leamington buns are small sweet rolls made with sugar, butter, flour, dried cherries, citron peel, angelica, and orange essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Angelica and orange work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Leamington 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

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

Make the mixture

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the sugar and beat in the eggs.

  3. Mix in the dried cherries, citron peel, angelica, and orange essence.

Bake

  1. Spoon the mixture into small greased tins.

  2. Bake for about 15 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. Angelica + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + angelicatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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 set.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the buns a tender, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly in the oven.
Dried cherries
Add concentrated sweetness, moisture and chewy pieces throughout the buns.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, orange. 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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