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Bread

French Rolls

A yeast bread roll made with flour, butter, milk, sugar, yeast, and salt, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Scald the milk and mix it with the butter, sugar, and salt.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the yeast.

  3. Pour the mixture into the flour without stirring.

  4. If making in the morning, let it rise until noon.

  5. Mix everything together with a knife and let it stand for 2 hours before tea-time.

Shape and rise

  1. Roll the dough thin, cut into rounds, butter half, and fold them together.

  2. If making at night for breakfast, keep in a cool place to prevent over-rising.

  3. Allow at least 2 hours for the second rise.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps the folded layers separate.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and its milk sugars help the crust brown.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds mild sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the scalded milk cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is a living organism that is killed by very hot liquid. Cooling the scalded milk to lukewarm keeps the yeast alive so the dough can rise properly.

“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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