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Parker House Rolls (Two quarts of flour one cake)
Two quarts of flour, one cake of yeast, one pint of warm milk, one tablespoon of shortening, one tablespoon of sugar. Make a sponge, leaving out enough flour to mix when rolling out. If for tea, mix in the morning. Bake as soon as ready.
— Mrs. Walton Van Loan
A village cook's shorthand: it assumes you know what a sponge is, that bread dough needs salt, and that rolls go into a hot oven. Here is what to fill in.
- One cake of yeastYeast cakes of the period varied in size and kind; a compressed cake of the sort sold commercially was in the region of 0.6 oz. One packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast is a workable substitute.
- Two quarts of flourFlour was measured by volume, so this is about 8 cups, or 2 lb / 900 g. Hold back a cup or more, as the receipt instructs, for the board.
- The liquid is shortOne pint (2 cups) of milk against 8 cups of flour gives a very stiff dough by modern standards. Expect to add water or milk until it is soft and slightly tacky; the original cook would have judged this by feel.
- Salt is missingThe receipt names no salt, though the rolls are flat and bland without it. Reckon about 1 tablespoon of fine salt for this quantity of flour.
- Make a spongeCombine the warm milk, yeast, sugar and about half the flour into a loose batter and let it rise until bubbly and domed, an hour or so. Then beat in the shortening, salt and remaining flour and knead.
- If for tea, mix in the morningThe instruction is a schedule, not a technique: the sponge and dough together want several hours at room temperature, which is what mixing in the morning buys. A cool overnight rise in the refrigerator is a modern alternative.
- ShapingParker House rolls are rolled about 1/4 inch thick, cut in rounds, creased off-center with a knife handle, buttered and folded over so the top overhangs. Set them close together in the pan so they rise into each other.
- Oven and time"Bake as soon as ready" means as soon as the shaped rolls have puffed, before they slacken. The receipt gives no temperature; in a modern oven, 400-425F for 15 to 20 minutes until deep gold.
- YieldTwo quarts of flour makes a great deal of bread: roughly three dozen rolls. Halve everything for an ordinary household.
Parker House rolls take their name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened by Harvey Parker in 1855, and the folded, butter-creased roll served in its dining room was widely copied; the story that a temperamental baker flung unfinished dough into the oven is traditional rather than documented. By the 1870s and 1880s the name appears in printed cookbooks and newspaper columns, usually without any explanation, which is why Mrs. Van Loan could set down five ingredients and a rising schedule and assume her neighbors knew the shape. Her receipt is a sponge-risen roll built on compressed yeast, which by then was making same-day bread easier for the home cook than the hop or potato yeast earlier generations kept going in a crock. Mrs. Walton Van Loan belonged to the Catskill family whose guidebooks steered summer visitors through the mountain hotels, and a hotel roll on a village tea table fits that world exactly.