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Potato Rolls

Potato rolls are yeast‑leavened rolls made from mashed potatoes, butter, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Rolls

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 ↓

Potato Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes, then peel and mash them.

  2. While hot, add the butter and salt, then pour in the milk.

  3. When lukewarm, add the yeast and enough flour to form a dough.

  4. Knead the dough and set it aside to rise.

Shape and bake

  1. Once light, shape into rolls and place on buttered baking sheets.

  2. Let them rise again and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Potatoes
Mashed potato adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the rolls.
Yeast
Yeast ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the rolls rise and become light.
Flour
Flour provides the gluten network that gives the dough structure to hold its risen shape.
Milk
Milk adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.
Butter
Butter adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and gives a richer flavour.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before shaping. Yeast needs time to ferment and build gas in the dough. Shaping before the dough is light traps less gas, so the rolls come out dense rather than airy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, flour):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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