Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Tea Rolls
Ingredients
Directions
Sift salt with 4 cups of flour and rub in lard.
Mix in yeast and gradually stir in warm milk.
Stir well for 8-10 minutes, cover, and let rise overnight.
In the morning, sift in the remaining flour and knead for 30 minutes.
If flour is sifted before measuring, use 6½ cups instead of 5½ cups.
In warm weather, knead all flour at night and again in the morning for 30 minutes.
Cover and let rise until afternoon.
Shape dough into long narrow biscuits and place in buttered cake pans, close together.
Alternatively, shape into small rolls and place in two rows in a buttered pan.
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.
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
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