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Potatoe Rolls

A yeast dough roll made with mashed potatoes, butter, milk, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Potatoe Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them with the butter.

  2. Add enough milk to make the mixture pass through a colander.

  3. Mix the yeast and warm water with the potato mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture over the flour and add salt.

  5. Knead the dough well, adding more warm milk or water if needed.

  6. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes.

  3. Serve toasted and buttered.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Potatoes
Add moisture and softness to the dough, giving the rolls a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and adds richness.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the dough come together and stay soft.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough well. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense, while the dough should be adjusted with liquid only as needed to keep it workable.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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