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Dessert

Richer Buns

A sweet yeast bread with currants, candied peel, and caraway seeds, baked into rich buns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Richer Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Melt the butter and sugar in ½ pint of new milk.

  2. Mix ½ pint of warm milk with the yeast and strain it into the butter mixture.

  3. Add enough flour to create a thin batter, then pour it into a well in the remaining flour.

  4. Cover and let it rise.

Make the dough

  1. Add spices to the flour dry, if using.

  2. Wash and dry the currants, then add them to the dough last.

  3. For a richer version, work the butter into the flour, then mix in a wineglassful of yeast with warm milk.

  4. For each pound of flour, add 4 eggs and caraway seeds.

  5. Beat the eggs and sugar, mix with the sponge, and add warm milk to form a soft paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop pieces of the paste onto buttered tins, allowing them to take their own shape.

  2. Sprinkle caraway comfits on top and bake for 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the batter and dough structure that holds the buns together as they rise.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas, making the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the soft paste set and hold its shape when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, softening the crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning during baking.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruity pockets throughout the buns.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise before adding the rest of the flour. Yeast needs time to ferment the thin batter and build gas and flavour. Adding the remaining flour too early leaves the dough dense and under-risen.

Swap the currant

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

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

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