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French Rolls

A yeast dough roll made with milk, butter, sugar, egg, and yeast cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Add the butter and sugar.

  3. Once cool, add the yeast cake.

  4. Stir to form a stiff batter.

  5. Set aside overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add the beaten egg and mix until smooth.

  2. Let the dough rise.

  3. Mold it again.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick.

  2. Spread with butter.

  3. Roll up.

  4. Cut into 1-inch thick slices.

  5. Let the slices rise, then bake.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Provides liquid that moistens the dough and gives a soft, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives richness and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the dough hold together.
Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only once the milk mixture has cooled. Yeast is a living organism. Adding it to scalded, still-hot milk can kill it, so the dough will fail to rise properly.

“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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