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Dessert

Wheat Rolls

A simple batter of flour, sugar, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, egg, and milk baked into rolls.

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 ↓

Wheat Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  2. Work in the butter until well mixed.

  3. Add the egg and enough milk to create a thick batter.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into hot pans and bake until golden.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 that holds the rolls together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the rolls.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda, producing rising gas.

The step that matters

Spoon the batter into hot pans. Batter placed into a hot pan starts setting and rising right away, while the baking soda and cream of tartar are still releasing gas. Hot pans give an initial burst of heat that helps the rolls rise and brown evenly.

“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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