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Breakfast Bolls, Quickly Made

A quick oven-baked roll made from flour, lard, butter, baking powder, sugar, salt, and milk.

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 ↓

Breakfast Bolls, Quickly Made

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the lard and butter into the flour until well combined.

  3. Mix in the baking powder, sugar, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the milk to form a light dough, being careful not to overwork it.

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

Bake

  1. Brush the tops with milk.

  2. Bake until golden brown, brushing again halfway through for a crisp crust.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness by coating flour particles.
Butter
Adds flavor and tenderness, and helps the crust brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the rolls rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and helps the tops brown.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk and avoid overworking the dough. Mixing too much develops gluten, which makes the rolls tough and dense rather than light and tender. Adding milk gradually lets you stop once 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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