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Dessert

Tea Rolls

A yeast dough roll made with milk, salt, lard, sugar, egg, and flour, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Tea 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. Pour the scalded milk over the salt, sugar, and lard.

  2. When lukewarm, beat in enough flour to make a batter and mix well.

  3. Add the yeast and let it rise until light.

  4. Once risen, add the egg and enough flour to knead the dough.

  5. Let the dough rise until light again.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut with a cutter.

  2. Brush with melted butter, fold over, and place in a buttered pan.

  3. Let rise until light, then bake for 15 minutes 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.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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 rolls their structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast and adds softness and a mild richness to the dough.
Egg
Adds structure, richness, and color to the dough once it is kneaded.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the rolls soft.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and provides food that helps the yeast ferment.

The step that matters

Wait until the milk is lukewarm. Very hot liquid can kill yeast, so the dough may fail to rise. Lukewarm liquid lets the flour batter cool enough for the yeast to stay active and raise the dough.

“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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