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Breakfast and Dinner Bolls

A yeasted roll made with butter, water, milk, flour, sugar, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Breakfast and Dinner Bolls

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 dough

  1. Melt the butter in a pitcher with boiling water.

  2. Add cold milk and pour into a bread pan.

  3. Stir in flour, yeast, sugar, and salt until smooth and light.

  4. Cover with a cloth and let rise until doubled in size.

  5. Knead the dough on a floured surface and roll it out to 1 inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into pieces and shape into rolls about 6 inches long.

  2. Grease bread pans with butter and place rolls inside.

  3. Let rolls rise for 1 hour, then bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  4. Brush hot rolls with butter before removing from the pan.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor, and softens the crust when brushed on.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning to the crust.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving a softer crumb than water alone.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast gas expansion gives the rolls their lightness. Rising too short leaves dense rolls, while the dough needs warmth and time to inflate fully before shaping and baking.

“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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