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Spirit Rolls

A yeasted roll made with mashed potatoes, flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spirit Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift flour into a bowl.

  2. Mash hot potatoes into the flour until smooth.

  3. Work in the butter until well combined.

  4. Add the eggs, salt, sugar, and yeast; knead well.

  5. Set the dough to rise at 12 o'clock in summer and 11 o'clock in winter.

Shape and bake

  1. An hour before serving, turn the dough out onto a floured surface.

  2. Roll the dough lightly to 1 inch thick and cut into round cakes.

  3. Let the cakes stand for a while, then bake until 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + sugartop 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. 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

Potatoes
Add moisture and a tender, soft crumb to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that the dough's gluten builds around.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough together.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.

The step that matters

Set the dough to rise at the stated clock positions. Yeast activity depends on temperature, so the dough rises at different speeds in summer and winter. Letting it rise too long or too short changes the final texture and volume of the rolls.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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