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Italian Rolls

Italian rolls are bread dough rolled with butter, cut into strips, sprinkled with cornmeal, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Italian 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

  1. Work the butter into the dough until well combined.

  2. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  3. Cut the dough into strips nearly 1 inch wide and 7 to 8 inches long.

  4. Sprinkle cornmeal over the strips.

  5. Place the strips apart on a buttered baking pan.

Rise and bake

  1. Let them rise until light, then bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread dough
Forms the base structure that rises and bakes into the soft interior of the rolls.
Softened butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the crumb and helping the rolls brown.

The step that matters

Letting the strips rise until light. Under-proofed strips bake dense and heavy, while the yeast needs time to produce gas that lifts the dough. Rising fully before baking gives the rolls an airy texture.

“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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