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Bread

Hot Cross Buns

A sweet yeast bread with raisins and currants, shaped into buns and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hot Cross 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. Add butter, sugar, and salt to the scalded milk.

  2. Let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Stir in the dissolved yeast, cinnamon, flour, and beaten egg until well mixed.

  4. Fold in the raisins and cover the bowl.

Rise and shape

  1. Let it rise overnight.

  2. Shape the dough into large biscuit forms and place them in a pan one inch apart.

  3. Let them rise again.

  4. Brush with beaten egg.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Cool.

  3. Decorate with ornamental frosting to make a cross on top of each bun.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 buns their structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, and the glaze browns the crust.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a richer flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is sensitive to heat. Very hot liquid can kill it, so the dough may fail to rise. Lukewarm liquid keeps the yeast active.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, sugar, flour, butter, raisin, 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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