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Baking

Flannel Rolls

Flannel rolls are baked sweet milk and egg batter with flour and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Flannel Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat sweet milk and eggs together until well combined.

  3. Gradually add flour to create a thin batter, then add coarse sea salt to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into tin cups that are four inches deep.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Eggs set as the batter bakes, giving the rolls structure and a tender, custardy crumb.
Sweet milk
Milk supplies the liquid that makes the batter pourable and keeps the rolls moist.
Flour
Flour's starch and gluten set during baking, giving the rolls their firm shape.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour to create a thin batter. Adding flour slowly, while beating, prevents lumps and keeps the batter thin. Too much flour makes the batter thick and dense, so the rolls bake heavy instead of light.

“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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