Skip to main content
Bread

French Rolls

A simple yeast bread roll made with flour, butter, milk, egg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

French 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.

Make the dough

  1. Combine flour and butter in a bowl until well blended.

  2. Mix in yeast and enough milk to form a stiff dough.

  3. Add the egg and a little salt, then stir with a wooden spoon.

  4. Let the dough rise without kneading.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls and place on baking tins.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Brush the rolls with beaten egg before removing from the oven.

  4. Leave the rolls in the oven for an additional minute or two to dry.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a stiff, workable dough.
Egg
Adds richness and binds the dough; beaten egg gives the crust a glossy browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise without kneading. Yeast needs time to produce gas and expand the dough; skipping kneading keeps the texture tender, but the dough must still have room and time to rise fully for a light roll.

“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.

More french rolls recipes

Asparagus Stuffed 4 See all 185 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes