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Dessert

Egg Rolls

A sweet roll made with flour, milk, butter, baking powder, and egg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Egg 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the dry ingredients and sift twice.

  2. Cut the butter into the flour.

  3. Beat the egg and add it to the milk.

  4. Gradually mix this into the flour with a knife to form a soft dough.

  5. Toss the dough on a floured board.

  6. Pat the dough.

  7. Roll the dough lightly to ½ inch thickness.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into oblong pieces.

  2. Crease through the center of each roll with a floured knife.

  3. Roll the pieces lengthwise.

  4. Brush the tops with egg white.

  5. Sprinkle with granulated sugar.

  6. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 12 to 15 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 + 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).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with the liquid.
Butter
Cut into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the rolls rise and become light.
Egg
Adds richness and binds the dough, and its white gives the tops a glossy finish.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour to form a soft dough.

The step that matters

Gradually mix the liquid into the flour. Adding the milk and egg mixture slowly and mixing lightly keeps the dough soft. Overworking develops gluten, which makes the rolls tough.

“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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