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Bread

Light Rolls

Light rolls made from a sponge dough with shortening and optional egg, baked until risen.

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

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Light Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Prepare a sponge with 1 cup of liquid and let it rise until light.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons melted shortening, 1 to 2 tablespoons sweetening, and 1 well-beaten egg if desired.

Shape the rolls

  1. Knead in enough flour to form a smooth, elastic dough.

  2. Let the dough rise again or shape it into balls the size of an egg.

  3. Place the rolls close together for soft rolls or apart for crusty rolls.

  4. Let the rolls rise in the pan until they triple in size.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 25 to 35 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 structure that gives the dough its smooth, elastic body and final crumb.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough, giving a softer, more tender crumb.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Sweetening
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Placing the rolls close together or apart. Rolls set close together push against each other and stay soft with pale sides, while rolls spaced apart brown and crisp on all sides. Choose the spacing before the final rise so the texture matches what you want.

“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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