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Breakfast and Dinner Rolls

A yeast-based roll made with butter, milk, water, 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 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 dough

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

  2. Add cold milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into a bread pan.

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

  5. Cover with a cloth.

  6. Let rise until doubled in size.

  7. Knead the dough on a floured surface.

Shape and rise

  1. Roll the dough out to 1 inch thick.

  2. Cut the dough into pieces.

  3. Shape the pieces into rolls about 6 inches long.

  4. Grease bread pans with butter.

  5. Place the rolls inside the pans.

  6. Let the rolls rise for 1 hour.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Brush the 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.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast gas must fill the dough fully for a light texture. Rising too short leaves dense rolls, while rising too long can weaken the gluten so the rolls collapse or turn out flat.

“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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