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 ↓
Huckleberry Roly-poly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Sift the salt and cream of tartar with the flour.
Rub in the lard and butter, then wet with the milk.
Roll out the dough into a sheet longer than it is wide and ½ inch thick.
Fill and wrap
Spread the huckleberries on the dough, sweetening them well with white sugar.
Roll up the dough with the berries inside, pinching the ends to prevent juice from leaking.
Wrap the roll in a pudding cloth that has been wrung out in hot water and floured.
Bake and serve
Bake for 1½ hours.
Serve with hard sauce.
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 + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
-
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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 structure of the dough that holds the roll together while it cooks.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the dough rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Acts as an acid that reacts with the baking soda to give the dough lift.
- Lard and butter
- Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderising the dough.
- Huckleberries
- Supply moisture and tart fruit flavour that fills the roll as it bakes.
The step that matters
Pinching the ends of the roll. If the ends are not sealed, juice from the berries leaks out during baking, leaving the roll dry inside and the filling spilled into the cooking cloth.
“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
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.