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Bread

French Rolls

A yeast bread roll made with flour, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, salt, and yeast, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Combine warm milk and sifted flour in a large bowl to make a batter.

  2. Add beaten eggs and sugar, then beat hard for 15 minutes.

  3. Cover the bowl and let it rise overnight for luncheon or for a few hours in the morning for tea.

  4. Knead the dough well without adding more flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls and let them rise again until light.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rolls' shape and rise.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the rolls set and brown.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the dough.

The step that matters

Kneading without extra flour. Adding more flour to a sticky dough during kneading makes the rolls dense and dry. Kneading develops gluten, which traps the gas from the yeast and gives a light, elastic crumb.

“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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