Name: Hot Cross Buns
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon cinnamon; ½ cup raisins; ½ cup currants; dough for plain buns

Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients

1 tablespoon cinnamon
½ cup raisins
½ cup currants
dough for plain buns

Directions

Make the dough

Add cinnamon, raisins, and currants to the plain bun dough.
Roll the dough to a thick consistency and cut into 3-inch pieces.
Make cuts at right angles on the top of each bun.

Rise and bake

Let the buns rise.
Bake the buns.
Glaze the buns during 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.

Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Cinnamon + curranttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cinnamon: Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the sweet dough.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy moisture to the bun crumb.
Currants: Add small pockets of sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the dough.