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Dessert

Coffee Rolls From Brioche

A brioche roll made with eggs, sugar, yeast, and lemon or cardamom, topped with a sugar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Coffee Rolls From Brioche

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Mix the whole eggs, egg yolks, sugar, softened yeast cakes in water, and lemon extract or cardamom seeds by hand.

  2. Add the flour and beat thoroughly.

  3. Let the mixture rise overnight in the refrigerator (about 6 hours).

  4. Turn the dough onto a floured board and roll it out to a ¼ inch thick square.

  5. Spread softened butter over the dough.

  6. Fold the dough into three layers.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into strips ¾ inch wide.

  2. Let the strips rise again.

  3. Twist the strips and bring the ends together to form a circle.

  4. Allow the circle to rise once more.

  5. Bake in a hot oven (400°F/200°C) for about 15 minutes.

  6. Once baked, frost the tops with a mixture of confectioners' sugar and hot water.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the dough set and brown in the oven.
Egg yolks
Add fat and richness, giving the dough a tender crumb and golden colour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Yeast cakes
Produce gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Softened butter
Adds fat that makes the layers tender and flaky when folded.

The step that matters

Overnight rise in the refrigerator. A slow, cold rise lets the yeast develop flavour and gives the dough enough strength to hold its layers. Rising too warm or too long can weaken the gluten and make the dough collapse.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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