Skip to main content
Main

Breakfast Rolls

A sweet yeast roll made with butter, milk, flour, sugar, and egg whites.

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

Breakfast Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter and warm the milk until blood-warm.

  2. Mix the melted butter, warm milk, and flour like bread.

  3. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, add the beaten egg whites and sugar.

  2. Shape the dough into long rolls and let them rise for 1 hour.

  3. Bake for 30 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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 gluten network that gives the rolls their structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which leavens the dough so it rises.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, adding lightness and helping the rolls hold their shape.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps browning in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff beaten egg whites hold air that lifts the dough. Stirring them in too vigorously collapses the foam, so the rolls lose lightness and rise less in the oven.

“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.

More breakfast rolls recipes

English 5Graham 4New York 3 See all 69 →

You might also like

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