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White Mountain Rolls

A yeast roll made with flour, milk, butter, egg whites, sugar, and salt, baked after overnight rise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Mountain Rolls

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 ↓

White Mountain Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl.

  2. Add salt and sugar to the flour.

  3. Boil the milk.

  4. Add butter to the hot milk to melt.

  5. Wait until the milk cools to blood heat.

  6. Add the beaten egg whites and yeast to the mixture.

  7. Stir the mixture into the flour, beating vigorously.

  8. Knead the dough for 20 minutes.

  9. Let the dough rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Take pieces of dough the size of an egg.

  2. Shape the pieces into long rolls.

  3. Place the rolls in a greased shallow pan.

  4. Let the rolls rise until they are a little more than double their original size.

  5. Bake the rolls for 30 minutes.

  6. Cover the rolls with paper as soon as they begin to brown.

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. 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gluten network that gives the rolls their structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Egg whites
Add protein that strengthens the dough and helps it hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer texture.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Covering the rolls as they brown. Bread browns quickly near the end of baking, so the crust can darken or burn before the centre is fully cooked. Covering with paper slows surface browning while the inside finishes.

“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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