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Milk Rolls

Milk rolls are small, sweet rolls made with flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Milk Rolls

serves 6
Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour with your hands.

  2. Add salt, ½ ounce of sugar, and baking powder.

  3. Make a well in the center, pour in the milk, and stir in the dry flour from the sides.

  4. Knead the mixture quickly and lightly on a floured surface.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into six pieces and shape each into a roll about four inches long.

  2. Cut each roll twice across the top with a sharp knife.

  3. Place the rolls side by side on a floured baking tin.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  5. Remove from the oven, brush with milk, sprinkle with remaining sugar, and return to the oven for 1 minute to dry the milk.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the rolls rise in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and helps the tops brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Knead the mixture quickly and lightly. Overworking the dough develops gluten and makes the rolls tough and dense, so handle it briefly and gently.

“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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