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Dessert

New Orleans Rolls

A sweet, buttery roll made from bread sponge, sugar, butter, milk, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

New Orleans Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine the milk, sugar, butter, and salt into the bread sponge.

  2. Add flour to form a medium dough.

  3. Let the dough rise once, then divide into 2-ounce pieces.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll each piece into long strings like pretzels and twist into knots.

  2. Place on baking pans so they touch at the sides and ends.

  3. Brush the ends with melted lard to help them separate during baking.

  4. Allow to rise again, then bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Bread sponge
Provides the fermented base that gives the dough its rise and yeasty flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and golden browning to the crust.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps browning through its milk sugars.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Brushing the ends with lard before the second rise. Lard keeps the touching rolls from fusing as they expand, so they separate and bake with distinct sides. Brushing too little leaves them stuck together.

“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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