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Potato-Rolls

A yeast-based roll made with mashed potatoes, butter, milk, and flour, baked until golden.

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 ↓

Potato-Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them with butter, salt, and enough milk to pass through a sieve.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with yeast and warm water.

  3. Pour the mixture into the flour and knead well.

  4. If the dough is too dry, add more warm milk and water.

  5. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls and place them on a floured baking sheet.

  2. Let the rolls rise for 20 minutes before baking.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  4. Serve toasted and buttered for best flavor.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + flourtop 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

Potatoes
Add moisture and softness, keeping the rolls tender and light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the rolls rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the dough's texture.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough with enough liquid. Flour must be hydrated and kneaded so gluten develops; a dough that is too dry will be stiff and produce dense rolls, so adjust liquid as needed.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, flour):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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

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