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Eight Breakfast or Dinner Rolls

A quick, lightly leavened roll made with flour, butter, baking powder, salt, and milk, baked until browned.

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

Eight Breakfast or Dinner Rolls

8 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour with a wooden spoon, then mix in the baking powder and salt.

  2. Gradually add the milk, mixing lightly until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into 8 equal portions and shape them with the spoons.

  2. Place the rolls in 8 well-buttered patty pans on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake until the rolls are slightly browned and have risen, about 15-20 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the rolls together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, making the rolls rise and become light.
Unsalted butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture and browning from its sugars.

The step that matters

Mixing the milk in lightly. Overworking the dough once the milk is added develops gluten, which makes the rolls tough rather than light and tender.

“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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