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Reliable Receipt for Four Nice Breakfast or Dinner Rolls

A simple roll made from flour, butter, milk, baking powder, and salt, baked until lightly 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 ↓

Reliable Receipt for Four Nice Breakfast or Dinner 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 a bowl, rub the butter into the flour using a wooden spoon.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the mixture and mix the dough 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 shaped dough in four well-buttered patty pans.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until the rolls are slightly browned and 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once it is mixed with liquid.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the rolls.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the rolls rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture and browning.

The step that matters

Add the baking powder and stir well into the dough. Baking powder starts releasing gas once moistened, so it should be evenly distributed and worked in promptly, then shaped and baked without delay, to give an even, good rise.

“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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