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Cinnamon Rolls

A sweet yeast roll filled with cinnamon, sugar, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cinnamon Rolls

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 ↓

Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in 1 cup of water to make a sponge and let it rise overnight.

  2. Warm 1 pint of milk and ½ cup of shortening.

  3. Mix the warm milk, shortening, ½ cup sugar, and 3 beaten eggs with the sponge.

  4. Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff enough to handle with a spoon.

  5. Let the dough rise.

Shape and fill

  1. Spread the dough on a floured surface.

  2. Spread the dough with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and currants.

  3. Roll the dough and cut it into 1‑inch strips.

  4. Let the strips rise in pans.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. When removed from the oven, spread with butter, sugar, and cinnamon on top.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 sponge so the dough rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Add richness and structure to the enriched dough.
Shortening
Adds fat for a tender crumb and softer texture.
Milk
Moistens the dough and adds softness and browning from milk sugars.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the rolls and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the strips rise in pans. The shaped dough needs to rise fully before baking. Under-proofed rolls stay dense, while the yeast's gas bubbles give the baked rolls their light, open texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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