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Dessert

Tea Rolls

A sweet roll made with butter, flour, baking powder, salt, eggs, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Tea 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. Work the butter into the flour.

  2. Add baking powder and salt.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them into the flour with sugar to taste.

  4. Add enough milk to make a dough that can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into strips, roll them up, and brush with egg.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the rolls together as they bake.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds fat that tenderises the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the rolls rise and become light.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness, and the brushed egg helps the surface brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Flour absorbs liquid at its own rate, so add milk gradually. Too much makes the dough sticky and hard to roll, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly.

“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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