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Excellent Rolls

A yeast-leavened roll made with flour, butter, lard, milk, salt, and egg.

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

Excellent Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix and first rise

  1. Mix the flour, butter, lard, milk, yeast, salt, and egg.

  2. Scald the milk over boiling water and pour it over the beaten egg.

  3. Stir in the butter and lard.

  4. When cooled to boiling heat, mix in 1 pound of flour and the yeast.

  5. Place in a warm area to rise.

  6. Once light, add the remaining ½ pound of flour.

  7. Let it rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough.

  2. Cut into biscuits.

  3. Place in buttered pans.

  4. Cover and let rise until light.

  5. Prick and bake at 400°F (200°C).

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Builds the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it feeds, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb soft and tender.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for a firmer, golden crumb.
Milk
Supplies moisture and milk solids that soften the crumb and aid browning.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast to the milk mixture. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool enough that it does not harm the yeast before the dough can rise. The record's wording says the mixture is cooled to boiling heat, which would be too hot for yeast, so check the temperature before adding it.

“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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