Skip to main content
Main

Swiss Rolls

A yeast bread roll made with milk, butter, and flour, risen and baked at 400°F.

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

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 ↓

Swiss 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. Mix the yeast, salt, tepid milk, butter, and flour together until well combined.

  2. Cover the mixture.

  3. Let it sit for 3 hours.

  4. Add the lukewarm milk to form a dough.

  5. Let the dough rise for another 1½ hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into fancy shapes.

  2. Let them rise in the pan for 15 minutes.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve with coffee or chocolate for breakfast.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. 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

Vienna yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Milk
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and helps form a soft, pliable dough.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a richer texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise. Yeast needs enough time and warmth to produce gas; rising too short leaves the rolls dense, while the dough must be handled gently so the trapped gas is not knocked out.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes