Skip to main content
Main

Rice Buns

Rice buns are baked bread made from finely ground rice, sugar, butter, flour, milk, and egg powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Rice Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Thoroughly mix the ground rice, sugar, flour, and egg powder.

  2. Soften the butter and rub it in well.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the milk.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) in well-greased small patty pans, filling them not too full, or use tin rings lined with paper.

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

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Finely-ground rice
Forms the main body of the bun, giving a fine, tender crumb.
Powdered white sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the buns brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that shortens the dough, making the texture tender and rich.
Flour
Adds some gluten-forming structure to help the buns hold their shape.
Milk
Moistens the mixture so it binds into a workable dough.
Concentrated egg powder
Provides egg proteins that help bind the mixture and set during baking.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the butter. Butter must be softened and worked evenly into the dry mix so it coats the flour and rice particles. Uneven pieces of fat create greasy or crumbly spots, and the texture of the finished bun depends on that even distribution.

“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

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes