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Potato Eolls

A yeast‑leavened potato cake made from mashed potatoes, milk, egg yolks, and flour, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Potato Eolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with their skins on until tender.

  2. Squeeze the cooked potatoes in a towel to dry and remove the skins.

  3. Mash the potatoes until smooth.

Make the dough

  1. Mix in the butter and salt.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir into the potatoes.

  3. Pour in the milk.

  4. Add the yeast, mixing well.

  5. Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms.

  6. Set the dough aside to rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the risen dough into cakes the size of an egg.

  2. Let the cakes rise again.

  3. Bake the cakes until light 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.

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
Provide starch and body, giving the rolls a soft, moist crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness, and help bind the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for softness and a richer flavor in the crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and some sweetness and browning from milk sugars.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Flour
Provides gluten and structure so the stiff dough holds its shape.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms. Adding flour in stages lets you stop once the dough is stiff but still soft. Too much flour makes the rolls dense and dry, while too little leaves a sticky dough that is hard to shape.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, 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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