Skip to main content
Main

Brentford Rolls

A yeasted roll made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and yeast, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Brentford 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. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, sugar, and butter.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix with yeast and milk.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients and knead the dough well.

  4. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and shape into rolls.

  2. Place the rolls on buttered tin plates and let them rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps gas as it rises.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the rolls set and brown in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives the rolls a richer flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and some sugars that help the dough brown while baking.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs a warm, sufficient rise to build the gas that gives the rolls their lightness. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse 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.

You might also like

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