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Vienna Rolls

Vienna rolls are yeast‑leavened bread rolls made from a thin batter of flour, milk, water, salt, and yeast, baked until golden.

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

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vienna Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 pounds of sifted flour with ½ pint of milk and ½ pint of water to form a thin batter.

  2. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of salt in ½ pint of milk and add it along with 1 compressed yeast cake to the batter.

  3. Leave some flour against the side of the bowl, cover, and let it rise for 50 minutes.

  4. Mix in the remaining flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, then let it stand for 2.5 hours.

Shape the rolls

  1. Divide the dough into 1-pound pieces, then further divide each into 12 smaller pieces.

  2. Flatten each piece into a square about ¾ inch thick, fold the corners to the center, and pinch to seal.

  3. Place the rolls seam-side down on a cloth-covered board and let them rest for 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Transfer the rolls to a baking pan and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.

  2. Brush the rolls with milk halfway through baking, then return to the oven to finish 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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 dough structure and lets it hold its shape.
Milk
Adds richness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Water
Hydrates the flour so the dough can develop gluten and rise.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before shaping. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and build structure; shaping underproofed dough yields dense rolls, while the long rest lets gluten relax so the dough is easier to portion and shape.

“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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