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Dessert

Swiss Rolls

A sweet yeast roll made with milk, sugar, butter, yeast, flour, and salt, baked into a soft dough.

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 ↓

Swiss Rolls

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Scald the milk and combine it with sugar, butter or lard, and salt.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add flour and yeast without stirring.

  3. If preparing in the morning, let it rise until noon.

  4. Mix all ingredients together with a knife.

  5. Let the dough stand for 2 hours before tea time.

Shape

  1. Roll the dough thin.

  2. Cut the rolled dough into rounds.

  3. Butter the rounds.

  4. Fold the buttered rounds together.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the dough feel soft and tender.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, adds sweetness, and helps the crust brown.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and layers the folded rounds.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. Scalded milk must cool to a warm, not hot, temperature before the yeast goes in, or the dough will fail to rise.

“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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