Skip to main content
Dessert

Tea Rolls

Soft dough rolls made with butter, flour, baking powder, salt, and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Tea Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Warm the butter.

  2. Mix the baking powder into the flour. Combine well, then turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

Shape the rolls

  1. Roll out to ½ inch thick and cut with a large round cutter.

  2. Fold each round over to form a half-moon, wetting slightly between folds to help them stick.

  3. Place on buttered pans, spaced apart.

Bake

  1. Brush the tops with milk for a glossy finish.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 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. 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).

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 main structure that holds the dough together after kneading.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the rolls rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the dough.
Milk
Moistens the dough to a soft texture and gives the tops a glossy, browned finish.

The step that matters

Knead until smooth, then fold the rounds carefully. Kneading develops gluten so the dough holds its shape. Wetting the edges before folding helps the half-moons seal, so they do not open or split in the oven.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes