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Southern Potato Rolls

A yeast-based roll made with mashed potatoes, water, lard, sugar, salt, egg, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Southern Potato 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine mashed potato and 1/2 cup water.

  2. Dissolve yeast in warm water.

  3. In a bowl, mix hot water, lard, sugar, salt, and egg.

  4. Add potato mixture and yeast to the bowl, then stir in flour.

Rise and shape

  1. Knead until smooth, then let rise until light.

  2. Roll out dough as for biscuits and cut with a small cutter.

  3. Place two biscuits together with melted butter in between.

Bake

  1. Let rise again until light, then bake at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 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. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

Egg and flour 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

Mashed potato
Adds moisture and starch that keeps the rolls soft and tender.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands and softens the crumb.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for structure.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds mild sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. Yeast gas is trapped by the gluten network, which makes the rolls light. Underproofed dough bakes dense, while overproofed dough can collapse and turn coarse.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour. 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.

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