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Bread

Hot Rolls

A yeast bread roll made with flour, butter, lard, milk, sugar, and yeast, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Hot 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, rub together the flour, butter, and lard until well combined.

  2. Boil the milk, then let it cool slightly.

  3. Add the sugar and yeast to the cooled milk, stirring to combine.

  4. Pour the milk mixture into the center of the flour mixture and stir in enough flour to form a sponge.

  5. Once the sponge is light, mix in the remaining flour and knead on a floured surface until smooth.

  6. Cover and let the dough rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, shape the dough into rolls, handling it as little as possible.

  2. Bake the rolls in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps gas as it rises.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes flavor.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Shaping the dough in the morning. Handling the dough as little as possible keeps the gas bubbles from being knocked out after the overnight rise, so the rolls stay light and open in texture.

“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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