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Dessert

Spanish Buns

Spanish buns are sweet buns made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, sour cream, baking soda, cream of tartar, wine, and flavored with lemon or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spanish 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Combine sour cream with 1 teaspoon baking soda and 2 teaspoons cream of tartar.

Make the batter

  1. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the flour and the prepared sour cream mixture.

  4. Add the wine and flavor with lemon or cinnamon.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow pan or individual pans.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add tenderness and richness.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the leavening to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour cream to produce gas that helps the buns rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that stabilizes leavening and supports the rise with the baking soda.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating them together traps air in the fat, which gives the batter lift and a fine, tender crumb. Under-creaming leaves a denser bun.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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