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Egg Rolls

Egg rolls are fried batter discs made from flour, butter, milk, egg, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Egg Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and combine it with the milk and melted butter.

  3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until smooth.

Fry

  1. Heat oil in a pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides, then drain on paper towels.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 main structure of the batter once mixed with liquid.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the batter rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its soft, moist texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls of batter. The oil must be hot before the batter goes in. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping and browning quickly.

“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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