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Potato Rolls

Potato rolls are yeast dough made from mashed potatoes, butter, milk, and flour, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Rolls

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 ↓

Potato 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. Mash the boiled potatoes until smooth while still hot.

  2. Mix in salt, clarified butter, and hot milk until combined.

  3. Let the mixture cool to lukewarm, then add yeast.

  4. Gradually add flour until a firm dough forms.

  5. Knead the dough well, cover with a cloth, and let it rise near a warm place.

Shape and bake

  1. Once risen, shape the dough into rolls and place them on buttered baking sheets.

  2. Let the rolls rise for about 10 minutes.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes until firm but not hard.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the risen dough together.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and some sweetness and browning to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool enough to keep it alive, yet still warm enough for it to become active and raise the dough.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour. 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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