Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓
Swiss Rolls
Ingredients
Directions
Make a batter with 1 pint of flour and the dissolved yeast.
Add the optional potato if using, then let it rise.
Mix in 2 quarts of flour, lard, sugar, eggs, and salt.
Knead the dough until smooth and let it rise again.
Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and brush the top with melted butter.
Cut out rounds the size of a biscuit and stack them.
Let the stacked dough rise again.
Before baking, beat an egg and brush the top of each roll.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,978 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg 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
Swap the potato
The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Shallotfits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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