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Vienna Rolls

Vienna rolls are yeast dough pastries rolled into crescents and baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Vienna Rolls

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 ↓

Vienna Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Warm the milk with the butter and salt in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, thicken the warm mixture with flour until it forms a dough.

  3. Knead the dough well and add the yeast that has been activated.

  4. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. On a floured surface, roll out the dough thinly and cut it into triangular pieces.

  2. Roll each triangle up, leaving the tip out, and bend the ends to form a crescent shape.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  4. Brush the tops with egg white before baking.

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. 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).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 gluten network that gives the dough its structure and holds the crescent shape.
German yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk proteins and sugars that help the crust brown.
Egg white
Gives the tops a glossy sheen and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce the gas that inflates the dough. If the place is too cold the rise is slow and weak, and if it is too hot the yeast can be killed, leaving dense rolls.

“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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