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Dessert

Milk Polls

Milk Polls are small, lightly sweetened pastries made from flour, butter, milk, salt, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Polls

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. Combine flour, salt, sugar, and butter in a bowl.

  2. Rub together lightly.

  3. Gradually mix in the milk to form a light dough.

Shape the puffs

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured surface.

  2. Divide the dough into twelve pieces.

  3. Roll each piece into an oblong shape.

  4. Place the rolled pieces on a floured baking tray.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Brush the tops with milk just before they are done.

  3. Split open the baked pastries.

  4. Butter while hot.

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 + buttertop 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

Self-raising flour
Provides the structure of the dough and, with its raising agent, lets the puffs rise and open up.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds richness and tenderness and helps keep the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Brush the tops with milk just before they are done. Milk on the surface browns quickly through the Maillard reaction and sugars caramelizing, so timing matters to avoid over-browning while the interior finishes cooking.

“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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