Skip to main content
Main

Breakfast or Dinner Rolls

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

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

Breakfast or Dinner Rolls

four 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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In an enamelled pan, rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the flour and mix lightly.

  3. Gradually add the milk, mixing until a dough forms.

  4. Add the baking powder and stir well into the dough.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Place the rolls in four buttered patty pans on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake until the rolls are slightly browned and have risen.

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough that holds the rolls together.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the rolls.
Yeatman’s baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the rolls rise in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking powder well. Baking powder starts releasing gas once it meets moisture and heat, so it needs to be evenly distributed through the dough. Uneven mixing leaves pockets that rise unevenly or taste bitter, and the rolls should go into the oven without delay.

“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