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French Rolls

A yeast dough roll made with butter, flour, egg, milk, and salt, baked into biscuits.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Beat the egg and stir it into the mixture.

  3. Add the yeast, milk, and a little salt.

  4. Knead the dough until it is light.

Shape and bake

  1. Mould the dough into large biscuits.

  2. Bake the biscuits on tins.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rolls together.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer texture.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough.
Home-made yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Provides the liquid needed to form and hydrate the dough.

The step that matters

Knead the dough until it is light. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense, while the dough should feel smooth and elastic.

“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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