Skip to main content
Main

Famous Virginia Yeast Rolls

A yeast roll made with flour, yeast, sugar, salt, lard, and butter, baked in a hot oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Famous Virginia Yeast Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Dissolve 1½ teacups of fresh yeast, or ¾ yeast cake, in 1 pint of lukewarm water, along with 2 heaping tablespoons of white sugar and 1 small teaspoon of salt, to make a cup full.

  2. Mix with enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast to the batter after mixing.

  4. Let the batter rise at 2 P.M., set in a warm place until ready to make dough at 8 P.M.

Make the dough

  1. Take 2½ pints of flour, 2 round tablespoons of lard, and a little salt.

  2. Work lard and flour together, then add to the cooled batter.

  3. Knead the dough for 20 minutes until stiff.

  4. Set aside to rise overnight in a warm place.

  5. Before breakfast, take the dough out and knead for 5 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Let the dough rise again, then shape into rolls.

  2. Brush each roll with melted butter and bake in a hot oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

619Calories
13 gProtein
14 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Lard1 tbsp (12.8g)115
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Cakenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.). Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour (in the method)
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and chew.
Lard
Shortens the gluten strands, tenderizing the rolls and adding richness.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the rolls brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise at 2 P.M. until ready at 8 P.M.. Yeast activity depends on time and warmth; the starter must be fully active and bubbly before it is mixed into the dough, or the rolls will rise poorly and turn out dense.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes