Skip to main content
Main

Potato Rolls

Yeast rolls made with mashed potatoes, sugar, eggs, lard, flour, and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Rolls

Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Combine yeast, mashed potatoes, sugar, and eggs in a bowl; stir well.

  2. Let the mixture rise until noon.

  3. Add lard and enough flour to stiffen the dough.

  4. Let it rise until 3 o'clock.

  5. Shape the dough into rolls.

Prepare the potato batter

  1. Boil a good-sized potato until soft, then pour off the water and let it cool.

  2. Mash the potato and mix in 3 heaping tablespoons of flour.

  3. Thin the mixture with warm potato water to create a batter.

  4. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water and stir it into the potato mixture.

  5. Let it rise for about 2 hours.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Stir in lard, lukewarm boiled milk, sugar, and enough flour to stiffen the dough, using about 1 quart.

  2. Let it rise again for about 2 hours.

  3. Roll out the dough.

  4. Cut the dough into rounds.

  5. Fold the rounds together.

  6. Place the folded rolls on baking tins.

  7. Let the rolls rise for about 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Bake 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.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the rolls rise.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and softness to the dough.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough.
Lard
Adds fat, tenderness, and a soft crumb to the rolls.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the risen dough together.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before shaping. The yeast needs time to produce enough gas to lighten the dough. Rising too briefly leaves dense rolls, while the timed rises here set the final texture.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, milk. 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.

More potato rolls recipes

Sweet 5 See all 93 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesPotato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipes