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Dessert

Quick Cinnamon Bun

A sweet pastry made with flour, milk, sugar, egg yolk, shortening, baking powder, salt, butter, cinnamon, and currants, baked into a cinnamon bun.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Quick Cinnamon Bun

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Rub in the shortening, then mix in the milk with the beaten egg yolk to form a medium dough.

  3. Knead the dough lightly on a floured board, then roll it into a thin rectangular sheet.

Fill and shape

  1. Spread the dough with softened butter, then sprinkle with a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and currants.

  2. Roll the dough up like a jelly roll and cut into sections about 1.5 inches wide.

  3. Place the sections cut side down in a greased baking pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. Turn out while hot and let cool with the glazed side up.

  3. Serve warm, separating with two forks instead of cutting.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the rolled layers together as the bun bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, so the dough rises and becomes light.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to keep the crumb tender and short rather than chewy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the spiced filling stay rich and tender.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and fat, which softens the crumb and deepens its color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Knead the dough lightly. Overworking dough develops gluten, which makes the bun tough and dense instead of tender. Handle it just enough to bring it together and roll it out.

Swap the currant

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

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

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