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Ice Box Rolls

A yeast roll made with lard, sugar, water, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ice Box Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake and 2 teaspoons of sugar in ½ cup lukewarm water and let stand.

  2. Pour 1 cup of boiling water over 4 tablespoons of lard, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool to lukewarm.

  4. Add the slightly beaten egg and the yeast mixture to the cooled mixture.

  5. Stir in 2 cups of flour and beat until smooth.

  6. Add 3 more cups of flour.

  7. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C).

  2. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the rolls rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the dough and enrich its texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled in size. Under-proofed dough bakes up dense, while over-proofed dough collapses. Yeast needs time and warmth to build gas that lifts the gluten structure, 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.

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