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Pocketbook Rolls
1 quart of flour. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar. 2 tablespoonfuls of lard. 3 tablespoonfuls of yeast. 2 eggs. Mix up these ingredients with warm water, making up the dough at ten A. M. in summer and eight A. M. in winter. Put in half the lard when it is first worked up, and at the second working put in the rest of the lard and a little more flour.
Roll out the dough in strips as long and wide as your hand, spread with butter and roll up like a pocketbook. Put them in buttered tins, and, when they are light, bake them a light brown.--Mrs. L. C. C.
A plain enriched roll dough, folded rather than shaped, with the rise governed by the clock and the season rather than by a stated time. The hinge is the yeast: three tablespoons of a nineteenth-century liquid yeast is not three tablespoons of anything sold today.
- The yeastThree tablespoonfuls most likely indicates a homemade liquid yeast or barm, wet and comparatively weak. Use 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast, and expect the dough to rise faster than the original schedule implies.
- A quart of flourMeasured by volume, roughly 4 cups, somewhere between 450 and 500 g. Nineteenth-century soft Southern wheat was lower in protein than modern all-purpose flour; a soft or pastry flour, or all-purpose with a couple of tablespoons replaced by cornstarch, gives a closer crumb.
- No liquid quantityThe warm water is left entirely to judgment. Start with about 1 1/4 cups and add more only as needed for a soft, slightly tacky dough; the two eggs already carry a good deal of moisture.
- Timing and the seasonsThe two start times, ten in summer and eight in winter, allow for a slower rise in a cold kitchen; the recipe does not say when the rolls were wanted. With modern yeast in a 70F room, reckon on 1 to 1 1/2 hours for the first rise and 30 to 45 minutes after shaping.
- The second workingThis is a punch-down and knead, not a separate stage of mixing. The remaining lard and a little flour go in then, which enriches the dough after the yeast has already established itself.
- ShapingRoll each strip about the length and width of a palm, spread it with butter, and roll it up as the recipe directs, so the buttered surfaces are enclosed. The butter between the layers is what makes them pull apart.
- OvenThe recipe gives no heat at all, only a finished colour: 'a light brown'. In a modern oven, 400 to 425F for 12 to 15 minutes suits rolls of this size; hotter and the buttered fold colours before the centre sets.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 rolls from a quart of flour, depending on how generously the strips are cut.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1877, gathered contributions from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one ends with initials rather than a byline. Pocketbook rolls belong to the same family of folded American yeast rolls as the Parker House roll, generally traced to the Boston hotel of that name in the 1870s: a buttered round or strip doubled over so it bakes into two layers that separate at the fold. The name is usually said to come from the shape, a flat purse or wallet folded shut. The instruction to begin the dough at a fixed hour, varied by season, reflects a kitchen with no thermometer and no reliable yeast: the cook budgeted daylight and stove heat instead of minutes.