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Italian Rolls

Italian rolls are buttered bread dough rolled, cut, coated with cornmeal, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Italian 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. Work the butter into the bread dough after it has risen.

  2. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick.

  3. Cut into strips 1 inch wide and 7 to 8 inches long.

  4. Sift fine corn meal over the strips.

Rise and bake

  1. Place on a greased baking sheet, ensuring they do not touch.

  2. Let rise for about 1 hour until light.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Bread + corntop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and keeps the rolls tender and soft.
Bread dough
Provides the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the rolls their chewy crumb.
Fine corn meal
Sprinkled on the surface, it adds a gritty texture and helps keep the strips from sticking.

The step that matters

Spacing the strips on the baking sheet. Strips placed too close will touch as they rise and expand in the oven, fusing their sides together and preventing even browning on every surface.

“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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