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Vienna Rolls

Vienna rolls are sweet, buttered rolls made from a stiff dough of flour, butter, milk, baking powder, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Vienna Rolls

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 ↓

Vienna 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix softened butter or lard with flour and baking powder.

  2. Add sweet milk gradually to form a stiff dough.

  3. Stir in coarse sea salt and knead the dough until smooth.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Fold each round over to form a half‑moon, wetting edges to stick.

  3. Place on buttered pans, ensuring they do not touch.

  4. Brush the tops with milk for gloss.

  5. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 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.

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. 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rolls' shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the rolls rise and become light.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a softer bite.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture and browning.

The step that matters

Folding and placing the rolls apart. Wetting the edges helps the folded halves seal, so they do not open in the oven. Spacing them so they do not touch lets heat reach every side, so the rolls bake evenly and rise without fusing together.

“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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