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French Rolls

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

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 ↓

French Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the milk along with the salt.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly, then sift in the flour.

  4. Add the beaten egg and yeast, and mix well without kneading.

  5. Allow the dough to rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into rolls, handling it as little as possible.

  2. Place the rolls on a baking sheet and bake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 rolls their structure.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the dough as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and helps form the dough.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg and yeast, and mix well without kneading.. Mixing without kneading keeps the gluten network from becoming overdeveloped, so the rolls stay tender. Yeast needs the mixture cool enough not to be killed by heat, which is why the cooling step comes first.

“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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