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Dessert

Penny Buns

A sweet roll made with boiling water, lard, salt, sugar, eggs, yeast, and flour, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Penny Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve lard, salt, and sugar in boiling water.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add eggs and yeast dissolved in water.

  3. Stir in enough flour to form a stiff dough and knead.

  4. Place the dough in a warm area to rise.

  5. Once risen, cut down the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Place in muffin pans the night before and bake for 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Add richness and structure to the dough as they set during baking.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens texture.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm area. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas. If the dough is too cold, it rises slowly or not at all, leaving the buns dense.

“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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