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Dessert

Egg Rolls

A sweet roll made with butter, flour, baking powder, sugar, egg, and milk, baked until golden.

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 ↓

Egg Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add baking powder and salt.

  3. Beat the egg until light, then mix in the milk.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the flour mixture and mix lightly.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into oblong pieces.

  2. Make a deep crease through the center of each roll with a floured knife.

  3. Brush the tops with egg white and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

  4. Bake for 16 minutes at 350°F (175°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. Butter + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Coats flour particles and adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the rolls rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, and the white gives the tops a glossy finish.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tops brown slightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg and milk into the flour. Mixing lightly keeps gluten development limited, so the rolls stay tender instead of tough. Overworking the dough makes the baked rolls dense.

“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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