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Dessert

Tea Rings

A sweet yeast dough pastry rolled with butter, cut into strips, folded into rings, brushed with egg wash, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tea Rings

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, sugar, butter, eggs, flour, salt, and yeast to make a warm dough.

  2. Set the dough in a warm place to rise until it has a good start.

Fold and chill

  1. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and roll it out thin.

  2. Place 3 pounds of butter in the center of the dough, then fold the dough over the butter from both sides.

  3. Turn both ends of the dough, then roll it out and fold it again as before.

  4. Refrigerate the dough for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thin again, cut into strips 2 inches wide and 24 inches long.

  2. Roll up each strip and place the ends together to form rings on baking pans.

  3. Brush the rings with egg wash and sprinkle granulated sugar on top.

  4. Let the rings rise until light, then bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with the liquid and eggs.
Butter
Folded into the dough in layers to create a flaky, tender texture.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.

The step that matters

Folding in the butter. The butter must stay cold and separate from the dough so it forms distinct layers. If it softens or breaks through, the layers merge and the rings bake up less flaky.

“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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