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Potato Rolls

A sweet yeast dough made with mashed potatoes, sugar, eggs, and lard, baked into small rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Potato Rolls

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Potato Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In the evening, mix mashed potatoes, sugar, salt, and lard together.

  2. Add warm water, beaten eggs, yeast, and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, add more flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

  2. Knead the dough until stiff and shape into small biscuits.

  3. Place biscuits in a greased pan and let rise until light.

  4. Bake until golden brown.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the rolls soft and tender.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas during fermentation, making the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning during baking.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Baking powder
Adds extra lift so the rolls rise further in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the rolls rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas. Rising too short leaves dense rolls, while over-proofing lets the dough collapse and lose structure.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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