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Milk Rolls

Milk Rolls are yeast dough rolls made with milk, sugar, butter, yeast, and flour, baked after rising.

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

Milk Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. While the milk is hot, add the sugar and butter.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the yeast.

  4. Mix in flour until the dough is stiff like bread.

  5. Set the dough aside to rise.

Shape and rise

  1. Once risen, roll out the dough thinner than for biscuits.

  2. Cut out shapes, spread with butter, and fold over.

  3. Let the rolls rise for one hour 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.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk
Provides moisture and richness, and its proteins help give the rolls a soft crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and stiffness.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes flavor.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the scalded milk mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, or the dough will not rise.

“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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