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Dessert

Ogontz School Cinnamon Buns

A yeast dough cinnamon bun with sugar, butter, currants, and cinnamon filling, baked to a golden finish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ogontz School Cinnamon 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine sugar, melted butter, eggs, salt, water, and yeast.

  2. Gradually add flour until a medium stiffness dough forms.

  3. Cover and let the dough stand overnight.

Shape and fill

  1. Roll the dough to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Spread thickly with melted butter, granulated sugar, currants, and cinnamon.

  3. Roll up the dough like a jelly roll and cut into 1½ inch thick pieces.

  4. Stand the pieces on end in well-greased pans.

  5. Let rise until light.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. Glaze with a mixture of sugar and water after baking.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 dough its structure and chew.
Eggs
Add richness, moisture and structure to the enriched dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough and filling.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the buns rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and filling and feeds the yeast, aiding browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the pieces rise until light. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and stretch the gluten. Under-proofed buns stay dense, while over-proofed ones can collapse in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

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