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Milk Rolls

Milk rolls are small rolls made from wholemeal flour, butter, salt, baking powder, 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 ↓

Milk Rolls

twelve rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the whole meal flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Rub the butter into the flour mixture using your fingers.

  3. Add enough milk to form a light dough.

  4. Sprinkle flour on a clean surface and place the dough on it.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into twelve equal pieces.

  2. Shape each piece into a roll.

  3. Place the rolls on a floured baking tray.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

  5. Serve warm or cold.

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).

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

Whole meal flour
Provides the structure of the rolls and a hearty, slightly nutty texture.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the rolls rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to bind the dough and adds moisture and browning.

The step that matters

Add enough milk to form a light dough. Too much milk makes the dough sticky and dense, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. Whole meal flour absorbs liquid slowly, so add milk gradually until the dough just holds together.

“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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