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Potato Rolls

A yeast dough made with boiled potatoes, milk, butter, sugar, and flour, shaped into rolls and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Rolls

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Rolls

Oven, in the book's wordsA very brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the potato batter

  1. Pare the potatoes, boil them, and mash until smooth.

  2. Scald the milk and add it to the hot potatoes, beating until smooth.

  3. Stir in the butter, sugar, and salt, and let the mixture cool to lukewarm.

  4. Dissolve the yeast in 2 tablespoons of lukewarm water and stir it into the batter.

Make and rise the dough

  1. Sift in enough flour to make a soft dough and knead for 15 minutes.

  2. Place the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

  3. Work the dough down in the bowl, grease the top, and let it rise again until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and roll it to ¾ inch thick.

  2. Use a small round cutter to stamp out the rolls and place them in a greased baking pan.

  3. Brush the tops with milk or melted butter and let them rise in a warm place until light.

  4. Brush the tops again and bake in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 12 minutes.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 dough.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Bread flour
Its gluten forms the structure that holds the risen dough together.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs a warm, adequate rise to build gas and air; under-proofed rolls stay dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, bread, flour. 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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