Name: Vienna Rolls with Straight Dough
Ingredients: 5 cups milk; 5 cups water; 6 ounces yeast; 1 pound 4 ounces sugar; 5 ounces coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 2 pounds lard; 1 egg (for wash)

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vienna Rolls with Straight Dough

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.

Combine milk and water in a large bowl.
Dissolve yeast in the liquid mixture.
Add sugar, salt, and lard; mix well.
Gradually add flour to form a medium firm dough.
Knead the dough thoroughly, then let it rise until doubled in size.
Work the dough over twice, then shape into rolls.
For crescents and twists, use a firmer dough; for spitzweck, a slacker dough is better.
Place rolls on baking pans and brush with egg wash.
Bake 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.

Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Yorkshire Pudding264 recipes

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Vienna Rolls with Straight Dough