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Bread

Light Rolls

Light rolls are a yeast-based bread rolls made with liquid sponge, shortening, lard, egg, flour, sugar, and baked.

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

Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 dough

  1. Prepare a sponge with 1 cup of liquid until light.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of melted shortening, 1 or 2 tablespoons of lard, and 1 well-beaten egg if desired.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a dough that is not too stiff.

  4. Let the dough rise again or shape it into bars by rolling pieces the size of an egg between your palms.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the shaped rolls close together for soft rolls or apart for crusty rolls.

  2. Let the rolls rise in the pan until they have tripled in size.

  3. Bake in a fairly hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 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. Flour + sugartop 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. Egg + sugartop 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 dough structure that traps gas and holds the rolls' shape.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Egg
Adds protein that enriches the dough and helps set the crumb when baked.

The step that matters

Let the rolls rise in the pan until tripled. Yeast rises the dough by trapping gas in its gluten network. Underproofed rolls stay dense, while overproofed rolls may collapse or lose structure in the oven.

“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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