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Bread

Dinner Rolls

A yeast bread roll made with flour, butter, sugar, salt, milk, and yeast, baked after rising.

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 ↓

Dinner Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour, then add the salt and sugar.

  2. Make a soft dough with the yeast and lukewarm milk, and let it rise for 1 hour.

  3. Knead the dough again and divide it into about 16 pieces.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the pieces into rolls and set them to rise on a warmed, floured baking sheet for about 15 minutes.

  2. Brush the rolls with egg and bake for about 15 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. 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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps the gas that makes it rise.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives the rolls richness.
Milk
Adds moisture to form the dough and contributes to a soft crumb and gentle browning.
Castor sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light texture. Rising too briefly leaves dense rolls, while the proofing on a warm tray must be watched so the dough does not over-expand and collapse.

“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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