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Dessert

Roll Breakfast Cakes

A sweet roll made from bread dough, butter, sugar, egg white, baking soda, hot water, cinnamon, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roll Breakfast Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the bread dough with butter, sugar, egg white, baking soda, hot water, and cinnamon.

  2. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough.

Shape and rise

  1. Roll the dough to ¼ inch thick and spread with a mixture of ⅔ cup sugar and 1 beaten egg.

  2. Roll up like a jelly cake and cut into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Place the pieces on their ends in shallow tins and let them rise until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Serve warm or cold with coffee.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread dough
Provides the main structure and chewy, airy crumb of the rolls.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and enriches its flavor.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps bind the dough and gives it structure.
Baking soda
Releases gas during baking to help the rolls lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the spiral filling.

The step that matters

Letting the pieces rise until light. Yeast gas must fill the dough before baking. Underproofed pieces stay dense, while overproofed pieces can collapse or lose their shape in the oven.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, egg, 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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