Skip to main content
Dessert

Vienna Rolls

Vienna rolls are sweet yeast rolls made with milk, sugar, butter, yeast, flour, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vienna Rolls

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 ↓

Vienna Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the milk and mix it with sugar and butter while hot.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add salt and yeast.

  3. Stir in flour to make a stiff sponge.

  4. Allow the sponge to rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick and cut with a cookie cutter.

  2. Brush the surface with melted butter and let it rise again.

  3. Bake until golden, then brush with butter while warm.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff sponge and rolls their structure.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the sponge, producing gas that makes the rolls rise and become light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning to the crust.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a rich flavor and golden surface.

The step that matters

Let the milk mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is a living organism, and very hot liquid can kill it. If the mixture is still hot when the yeast goes in, the sponge may not rise, so wait until it has cooled before adding the yeast.

“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