Skip to main content
Dessert

Bath Rolls

A baked roll made from butter, salt, milk, saffron, flour, glazed with milk and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Bath Rolls

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. Melt the butter and salt in the milk, adding saffron if desired.

  2. Mix this thoroughly with the flour dried before the fire.

  3. Set the mixture before the fire to rise.

  4. Knead the dough well and shape it into cakes about 3 inches thick.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

  2. Glaze the rolls with a mixture of milk and sugar.

  3. Return to the oven until fully baked.

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. Saffron + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Milk
Provides moisture and helps the dough brown through milk sugars.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the glaze brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Knead the dough well. Kneading develops the gluten network in the flour, which traps gas and gives the rolls their chewy structure. Under-kneaded dough bakes up dense and crumbly.

Swap the saffron

The recipe marks saffron as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour, sugar. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes