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Breakfast Rolls

A yeast dough roll made with butter, flour, milk, yeast, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Breakfast 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 ↓

Breakfast Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Wet the mixture with warm milk and add the dissolved yeast.

  3. Stir in the sugar and knead for 20 minutes.

  4. Cover the dough and let it rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, shape the dough into rolls.

  2. Let the rolls rise for 30 minutes.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  4. Cover with paper after 15 minutes to prevent over‑browning.

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. 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps gas as it rises.
Yeast
Produces gas during fermentation, which makes the rolls rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps browning in the crust.
Butter or cottolene
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Cover with paper after 15 minutes. Rolls brown quickly in the oven, and the surface can darken or burn before the centre is fully baked. Covering them with paper slows browning so the interior cooks through.

“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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