Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Rolls

Sweet rolls are yeast dough rolls flavored with cinnamon and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour and lard.

  2. Add boiled and cooled milk, yeast, and sugar; mix to a thin batter.

  3. Let the mixture rise for 1 hour.

  4. Knead for 20 minutes, then let it rise for another hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut with a round cutter.

  2. Wet one side of each round, sprinkle with ground cinnamon, and fold over.

  3. Let rise for another hour.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps gas as it rises.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Milk
Supplies moisture and proteins that help the dough become soft and browned.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during rising, which leavens the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Knead for 20 minutes, then let it rise. Kneading develops gluten so the dough can stretch and hold gas. Under-kneading gives dense rolls, and the second rise needs a well-developed structure to expand properly.

“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.

More sweet rolls recipes

Stuffed 3 See all 5 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes