Skip to main content
Dessert

Soft Buns

A yeast bread dough made with milk, sugar, butter, and yeast, baked into soft buns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Soft Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the milk and let it cool.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and yeast to the milk, mixing to form a sponge.

  3. Let the sponge rise overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add melted butter and white sugar to the sponge.

  2. Knead the mixture until soft and let it rise again.

  3. Roll out the dough and place it in tins.

  4. Allow the buns to rise until light.

Bake

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

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Provides liquid and sugars that feed the yeast and help form a soft crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the buns rise and become light.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the buns soft.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Letting the buns rise until light. The buns need enough time for the yeast to produce gas and stretch the gluten. Under-proofed buns stay dense, while over-proofed buns may collapse in the oven.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes