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Cinnamon Rolls
Follow Parker House rolls formula and at the second kneading roll thin, spread with melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, currants and finely shaved citron. Roll, and cut off pieces an inch thick. Stand these on end. Al'ow to rise and bake. These are especially good breakfast rolls with coffee.
This is a variation instruction rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the book's Parker House roll dough in hand. Everything else is left to judgment, so the notes below fill in the numbers a modern baker expects.
- The base doughA Parker House formula of this era is a soft enriched yeast dough raised with a compressed yeast cake. As a modern substitute, figure roughly 4 cups flour, 1 cup scalded and cooled milk, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup butter, a teaspoon of salt and a packet of instant yeast. Any standard soft dinner-roll dough works.
- "The second kneading"Most likely the point after the first full rise, when the dough is knocked back; in some period formulas it is the kneading that follows a sponge. Either way, that is when you roll it out — the book says only "roll thin"; about 1/4 inch works for rolls cut an inch thick.
- Filling quantitiesNone are given. For a batch from 4 cups of flour, figure 4 tablespoons melted butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 cup currants and 2 to 3 tablespoons shaved citron.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold at holidays alongside glacé fruit. It is firm and needs to be shaved very fine or it tears the dough. Candied orange peel is the closest everyday substitute; leaving it out costs the rolls only a little perfume.
- "Stand these on end"The hinge of the recipe. Cut spirals are set cut-side up in a buttered pan, sides nearly touching so they support each other as they rise and stay tall rather than unrolling.
- Second riseAllow 45 minutes to an hour at room temperature, until the rolls look puffed and press back slowly. Underproofed rolls bake dense and leak sugar syrup.
- OvenNo temperature is given because the book assumes a range judged by hand. Bake at 375°F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are deep brown and the centre roll reads about 190°F.
- YieldA batch this size gives 12 to 16 rolls in a 9x13 pan. They are meant to be eaten the day they are baked; there is no glaze or icing in this version.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, who was born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857 and went on to cook for the Pullman Palace Car Company and later for the Chicago subsidiary of U.S. Steel — one of the earliest cookbooks published by an African American chef under his own name. The cross-reference to "Parker House rolls formula" is typical of the book's compression: Estes wrote for people who already had a working roll dough and needed only the variation. Parker House rolls take their name from Boston's Parker House hotel, where the folded soft roll is generally traced to the 1870s, and by Estes's day the dough was familiar enough to serve as a base for other shapes. The currants and shaved citron mark these as a slightly dressed-up breakfast bread of the period, before the thick cream-cheese icing that now defines the American cinnamon roll — Estes serves them plain, with coffee.