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Bread

Delicious Light Bread or Rolls

A yeast-leavened bread roll made with milk, butter, lard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Delicious Light Bread or Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sponge

  1. Heat the milk until it boils, then let it cool until tepid.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in water and sugar, then add the milk.

  3. Mix 1½ cups of flour into the yeast mixture to create a sponge, beating until smooth.

  4. Let the sponge stand for about 1 hour.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter, lard, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg separately, then add the sponge to the butter mixture and mix thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add the remaining flour, one cup at a time (about 7 cups total), kneading until smooth.

  4. Let the dough rise for 2 to 2½ hours, or until it doubles in size.

  5. Knead again with a little flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into rolls.

  2. Place the rolls in greased pans.

  3. Bake for about 35 minutes.

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

Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough, giving a tender crumb.
Lard
Shortens gluten strands, producing a softer, more tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, contributing to a tender crumb and light browning.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the baked rolls.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool until tepid before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the milk must be cooled to tepid before it is added. Too hot and the sponge will not rise properly.

“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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