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Dessert

Italian Roll

A sweet roll made with flour, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, lemon rind, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Italian Roll

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Mix together the flour and sugar in a bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk and butter until boiling.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour and sugar mixture.

  4. Beat the eggs, add them with the lemon rind, and stir until thick like dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay greased paper on a baking sheet.

  2. Spread the mixture about ¼ inch thick.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until half done.

  4. Spread jam on the mixture.

  5. Bake again until fully cooked.

  6. Serve cold, whole or sliced into nearly 1‑inch thick pieces.

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. 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough as it sets in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a thick, dough-like mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until half done, then again until fully cooked. The sheet must be baked in two stages so the base sets firmly before jam is added and the roll finishes cooking. Underbaking leaves it doughy and hard to slice cleanly, while overbaking dries it out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, milk, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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