Skip to main content
Bread

Light Rolls

Light rolls are made from flour, lard, sugar, yeast, eggs, and grated potato.

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

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Light Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, lard, sugar, and grated potato.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and add it to the mixture along with the eggs.

  3. Knead the dough well until smooth.

  4. Cover and let it rise overnight or for several hours until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls, handling it lightly.

  2. Grease the tops of the rolls and let them rise again until puffy.

  3. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and bake the rolls until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 the gas produced by the yeast.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the rolls hold their shape and brown well.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture of the rolls.
Potato
Adds moisture and starch that keep the rolls soft and slow staling.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and build structure; under-proofed dough bakes up dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose its lift.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Potato BreadPotato Bread124 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipes