Skip to main content
Main

Potato Rolls

Potato rolls are yeast dough rolls made with boiled mashed potatoes, butter, salt, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Rolls

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Potato Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the potatoes while warm.

  3. Add butter, salt, and enough milk to make a soft batter.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Add the flour.

  6. Mix into a light dough.

  7. Add more milk if necessary.

  8. Knead well.

  9. Return to the mixing pan.

  10. Let it rise until light.

  11. Knead again.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into small cakes.

  2. Place on slightly buttered tins.

  3. Let them rise in a warm place until light.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  5. Wash the tops lightly with water.

  6. Cover with a clean towel to keep them soft.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the rolls.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough becomes soft and workable.

The step that matters

Let it rise until light. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to expand the gluten structure. Rolls that are underproofed stay dense, while the rise before baking sets their final lightness.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. 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 CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesPotato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipes