Skip to main content
Bread

Milk Rolls

Milk Rolls are yeast dough rolls made with milk, sugar, lard, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Milk Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, dissolve the yeast in lukewarm milk.

  2. Add sugar, lard, and salt to the mixture.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour until a soft dough forms.

  4. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth.

  5. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Let the rolls rise again until puffy.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once gluten develops during kneading.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes to browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Under-proofing leaves rolls dense, while over-proofing lets the gluten structure weaken and collapse in the oven. Rising time depends on warmth, so judge by size rather than the clock.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes