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Rolls, Flour and Potato

A yeast dough roll made with potatoes, sweet cream, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Rolls, Flour and Potato

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Peel and dry the potatoes.

  2. Mix the potatoes with sweet cream and milk, then rub through a wire sieve into a bowl with flour.

  3. Combine warm milk with a little yeast and add to the flour mixture.

  4. Knead into a dough and let it rise in a warm place.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into rolls and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Milk and flour 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

Potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the rolls soft and tender.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk sugars that help the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to ferment at a steady pace. Too cool and the dough rises slowly and stays dense; too hot and the yeast can die or the dough over-ferments and collapses.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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