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Fresh Excellent Breakfast Rolls

A soft, yeasted roll made with butter, milk, yeast, and flour, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Fresh Excellent Breakfast 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.

Make the dough

  1. Warm the butter in the milk.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water and add it to the milk mixture.

  3. Mix the whole with the flour and beat well.

  4. Cover with a double cloth and leave by the fire overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, shape the dough into 6 or 7 rolls.

  2. Let them stand for 30 minutes while the oven heats to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Bake for 30 to 35 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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.
Fresh german yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives the rolls a richer flavour.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. The dough must rise slowly and fully under a covered cloth; yeast activity depends on warmth and time, and an underproofed dough bakes up dense and heavy.

“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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