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Milk Rolls Made with Baking-powder

Milk rolls are small baked buns made with butter, flour, salt, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Milk Rolls Made with Baking-powder

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add salt and baking powder.

  3. Stir in milk to form a smooth, stiff dough.

  4. Divide the dough into balls.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. When half baked, brush the rolls with milk.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the rolls.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the rolls rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour into a dough and adds moisture and browning.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after shaping. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, so waiting lets the gas escape and the rolls rise less in the oven.

“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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