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Vienna Rolls

Vienna rolls are small, soft rolls made from flour, salt, baking powder, lard, and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Vienna Rolls

Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Vienna Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the lard until cold.

  3. Add the milk and mix into a smooth dough that doesn't stick to your hands.

  4. Flour the board, turn out the dough, and give it a quick turn or two to equalize.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to a thickness of ½ inch.

  2. Cut out rounds with a large cutter and fold each round in half.

  3. Place them on a greased baking sheet without touching.

  4. Brush the tops with a little milk to glaze.

  5. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 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.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the rolls as its proteins hydrate and set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the rolls rise and become light.
Lard
Coats flour particles when rubbed in, tenderising the crumb and adding richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour into a dough and adds softness, while its sugars help the glaze brown.

The step that matters

Rub in the lard until cold. Keeping the fat cold and evenly rubbed into the flour creates small pockets that make the rolls tender and flaky. Warm fat blends in and produces a denser texture.

“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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