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Potato Rolls

Potato Rolls are made by mashing boiled potatoes with flour, yeast, butter, and salt, then rising and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

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.

Make the starter

  1. Boil the potatoes, peel, and mash them smoothly with the flour.

  2. Add enough of the potato boiling water to achieve a thin mush consistency.

  3. Pour in the melted butter and let it cool, then add the yeast.

  4. Cover and let it rise in a moderately warm place overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, work in 4 cups of flour and shape into rolls.

  2. Let the rolls rise for 1.5 hours.

  3. Bake in a preheated 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.

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. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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 that keep the dough soft and tender.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the rolls rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the rolls their body.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Overnight rise in the starter. The yeast needs a moderately warm place to ferment slowly; if the spot is too cold the starter stays flat, and if too hot the yeast can overwork and sour the dough before shaping.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.

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