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Dessert

Snow Rolls

A soft yeast-based pastry rolled and baked with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Snow Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Scald the milk and let it cool.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in warm water.

  3. In a bowl, combine the cooled milk, dissolved yeast, sugar, and salt.

  4. Add flour gradually to make a very soft batter.

  5. Let the batter rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into pieces.

  2. Spread melted butter on each piece and fold them over.

  3. Let rise again, then bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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 of the soft batter and dough once it is gradually added.
Yeast cake
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and browns during baking for a golden finish.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its proteins help brown the crust.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until doubled in size. The yeast needs enough time to ferment and trap gas. Rising too short leaves the rolls dense, while the very soft batter needs to be handled gently so it keeps the air it has built.

“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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