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Dessert

Egg Rolls

A yeast dough roll with egg, butter, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Pour hot milk over shortening, salt, and sugar.

  2. Cool the mixture, then add the beaten egg, yeast cake, and flour.

  3. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 3½ hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough gently on a floured surface and cut into oblong shapes.

  2. Rub melted butter on half of each piece and fold over the other half.

  3. Let the rolls rise again for about 2 hours.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chewy crumb.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the dough and helps it bind.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its proteins help the crumb brown in the oven.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the baked rolls.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs enough time and warmth to produce gas and build structure. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose its rise.

“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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