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Raisin Graham Buns

A yeast dough with graham flour, white flour, raisins, and shortening, baked into buns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Raisin Graham Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cool the milk until lukewarm.

  2. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the milk.

  3. Add the warmed graham flour and stir everything together.

  4. Mix in the melted shortening and salt.

  5. Knead into a smooth dough, adding the raisins and white flour last.

  6. Knead for a few minutes.

Rise and shape

  1. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise until doubled in size.

  2. Press the dough down, cover again, and let it rise until tripled in size.

  3. Shape the dough into buns and place them in greased pans.

Bake

  1. Once the buns have doubled in size, bake them.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Graham flour
Gives the buns a hearty, nutty body and a coarser crumb than white flour alone.
White flour
Adds gluten-forming strength so the dough stretches and holds its rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning during baking.
Shortening
Adds fat that softens the crumb and makes the buns tender.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the buns.

The step that matters

Kneading in the raisins and white flour. Adding raisins and flour late in kneading keeps the dough from tearing and ensures gluten has developed enough to hold the raisins and rise evenly.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour. 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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