Skip to main content
Bread

Potato Rolls

A yeast-based dough with mashed potatoes, eggs, butter, sugar, and flour, shaped into rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Rolls

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Cook the potatoes in water until soft, then mash them finely.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and add it to the mashed potatoes along with 1 cup of flour.

  3. Set the mixture in a warm place until it becomes light.

Make the dough

  1. Stir in the beaten eggs, sugar, butter, salt, and 5 cups of flour.

  2. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Shape and rise

  1. Spread with butter, fold together, and place in pans.

  2. Let rise for about 1 hour before baking.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, giving the rolls a soft, tender crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it becomes light and rises.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough and enrich its crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and softens the crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise until light. The yeast needs a warm, undisturbed period to ferment and trap gas. Under-proofing leaves the rolls dense, while the rise before baking sets their final lightness.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar, butter. 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.

More potato rolls recipes

Sweet 5 See all 93 →

You might also like

Potato BreadPotato Bread124 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipes