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Dessert

Cinnamon Rolls

A sweet roll made with flour, butter, cinnamon, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cinnamon Rolls

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cinnamon Rolls

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. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Flour a board and roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Spread soft butter over the dough, then sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

  3. Roll the dough up tightly and cut into ½ inch slices.

  4. Pack the slices closely in a pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 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. Cinnamon + sugartop 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).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the rolls rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and carries the cinnamon-sugar filling.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a soft, workable dough.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the rolls brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Rolling and packing the slices. Rolling the dough up tightly keeps the spiral shape, and packing the slices closely in the pan supports them as they rise, so the rolls stay neat and bake evenly.

“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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