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Potato Rolls

A yeast-based roll made with mashed potatoes, flour, lard, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Potato Rolls

Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, lard, mashed potatoes, sugar, salt, and beaten eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the milk and the dissolved yeast, and mix well.

  3. Set the mixture aside to rise for 1 hour.

  4. Gradually add 6 cups of flour to form a soft dough.

  5. Do not knead the dough.

  6. Let the dough rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls.

  2. Let the rolls rise once more.

  3. Bake the rolls until golden brown.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the rolls rise and become airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough and set the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat for a tender, soft crumb and moist texture.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the rolls soft and slow staling.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the oven.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure.

The step that matters

Do not knead the dough. Kneading would build gluten and toughen the rolls; this soft, enriched dough is meant to stay tender, so it is mixed and rested rather than worked.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar, milk. 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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