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Dessert

Cinnamon Rolls

Cinnamon rolls are sweet rolls made with a soft dough, butter, cinnamon, raisins, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cinnamon Rolls

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cinnamon Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

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

  2. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and spread with melted butter.

  2. Sprinkle with cinnamon, raisins, and citron.

  3. Roll up the dough and cut into 1-inch pieces.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rolls together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the rolls rise and become light.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives a short, soft crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough becomes soft and pliable.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking powder gives its rise in the oven's heat, so the oven must be hot. Too cool an oven gives dense rolls, and baking past golden dries the dough.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, butter, 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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