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Or Tea

Rolls made from a yeast dough of butter, warm water, flour and yeast, risen and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Or Tea

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the butter in warm water.

  2. Mix the butter-water with the flour.

  3. Stir in the yeast lightly.

  4. Cover the mixture with a cloth and let it rise.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls and place them on floured baking sheets.

  2. Let the rolls rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Forms the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas as it feeds, which makes the dough rise.
Butter
Adds richness and softens the crumb, giving a tender texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to expand the dough. If the dough is under-risen before shaping or baking, the rolls will be dense and heavy. Both rises should be allowed to complete.

“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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