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Kentucky Rolls

A yeast roll made with flour, milk, egg, butter, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Kentucky Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Heat the milk, then add the butter and salt.

  2. When lukewarm, mix all ingredients together and set aside to rise in a warm place for at least 3 hours.

Shape and rest

  1. Once risen, form the dough into rolls with minimal handling.

  2. Let the rolls stand for 30 minutes or until light.

Bake

  1. Bake on a baking sheet.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Gluten proteins form the elastic network that gives the rolls their structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for a tender structure.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavour.

The step that matters

Form the dough with minimal handling. Pressing and reshaping the risen dough knocks out the gas bubbles the yeast built and overworks the gluten, which leads to dense rolls instead of light ones.

“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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