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Dessert

Geneva Buns

A yeasted bun with candied peel, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Geneva 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 the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, sugar, and chopped candied peel.

  2. Warm the milk and butter in a saucepan until just warm.

  3. Cream the yeast and add the warm milk mixture to it.

  4. Pour the yeast mixture into the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

  5. Place the dough in a warm spot to rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into buns and place them on a greased baking tray.

  2. Let the buns prove for 15 minutes.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 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. 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 and chew.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the buns rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its proteins help give a soft crumb.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Rising the dough until doubled. Yeast needs a warm place to become active. If the dough is under-proofed, the buns stay dense; if over-proofed, the gluten weakens and they may collapse or bake flat.

“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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