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Bread

French Rolls

A simple yeast bread roll made with flour, butter, egg, yeast, and milk.

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 ↓

French Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Mix in the beaten egg and a little yeast.

  3. Add enough milk to form a middling stiff dough.

  4. Beat the mixture well, but do not knead.

Rise and bake

  1. Let it rise, then bake on tins.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 main structure that holds the rolls together as they rise and bake.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture of the rolls.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape and bake golden.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form, giving the dough its stiffness and moisture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well, but do not knead. Vigorous beating develops gluten in the wet dough, which traps the gas from the yeast and gives the rolls their structure. Overworking a stiff dough can make it tough, so the cook should stop once the dough is smooth and elastic.

“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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