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Light Rolls

Light rolls are yeast dough rolls made with milk, water, lard, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Light Rolls

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Light Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Soak the yeast in tepid water while scalding the milk.

  2. Add lard and sugar to the hot milk, then stir in the cold water and salt.

  3. Beat in enough flour to make a stiff batter, then add the yeast.

  4. Place the mixture in a covered container and let it rise in a warm place for 2½ hours.

  5. Knead in enough flour to make a light dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick, spread with melted butter, and cut with a large biscuit cutter.

  2. Fold each piece in half and place in a baking pan.

  3. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 2½ hours.

  4. Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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 it rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the rolls their shape.
Milk
Adds richness, softness and browning from milk sugars and proteins.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Kneading in the final flour. Adding flour gradually until the dough is light, rather than all at once, keeps it workable. Too much flour makes the dough dense and dry, so the rolls will not rise well.

“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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