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Potato Rolls

A yeast dough made with boiled potatoes, flour, and lard, baked into rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Potato Rolls

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes in 1 quart of water until tender.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in ½ cup of lukewarm water.

  3. Mix the potato water and yeast.

  4. Combine with the flour in a large bowl.

  5. Add the lard, sugar, and salt.

  6. Work into a stiff dough.

Rise and shape

  1. Let the mixture rise until noon.

  2. Let the dough rise until 4 o'clock.

  3. Knead the dough slightly.

  4. Roll it out.

  5. Cut into rounds about 1 inch thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Dip each round in melted butter and fold over.

  2. Place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Potatoes
Add moisture and softness to the dough, giving the rolls a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets the crumb as it bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, helping the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully. The yeast needs enough time in a warm dough to produce gas and expand the gluten network. Rising too briefly leaves the rolls dense and heavy after baking.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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