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Ice Box Rolls
Dissolve 1 cake of yeast in 1½ C warm water Let rise about two hours, or until twice its size, Add 1 Clard 1 C mashed potato 1 C sugar Mrs. R. F. Wright.
Scald 1 qt. milk and cool Add 1 qt. and ½ pt. flour 1 level t soda 1 level t baking powder 1 level t salt Knead this well, until stiff enough to dent, and let rise about two hours, or until twice the size; make into biscuits, and let rise again about an hour, and bake. Keep this sponge in the ice-box, and take off as much as you want each day, and let rise about an hour, then bake, and have hot fresh rolls each day. 2 qts. flour
The text has come through the typesetting badly scrambled — the steps are printed out of order and at least two quantities are corrupted. Read it as a potato refrigerator dough and rebuild the sequence before you start.
- Working orderScald the quart of milk and let it cool to lukewarm; dissolve the yeast separately in warm water; combine milk, yeast, lard, mashed potato and sugar, then beat in flour with the salt, soda and baking powder. As printed, the milk falls after the yeast sponge and the contributor's name sits in the middle of the method.
- Corrupted measurements"12 C warm water" is almost certainly ½ cup, and "1 Clard" is 1 cup lard. The flour is genuinely ambiguous: the body says 1 quart plus 1½ pints while a stray line at the end says 2 quarts. Add flour by feel to the stated test — stiff enough to hold a dent — rather than trusting either figure.
- Yeast cakeOne cake of compressed yeast equals one packet, about 2¼ teaspoons, of active dry or instant yeast. If using instant it can go straight into the flour rather than being proofed in water.
- Soda and baking powderBoth appear alongside the yeast. The soda will take up some of the acid a long, cold ferment develops, and the baking powder gives a little extra lift after several days in the cold. They are not doing the main leavening and should not be increased.
- Mashed potatoUse plain boiled potato mashed without butter, cream or seasoning, cooled to lukewarm. Its starch holds moisture, which is why this dough stays workable for days instead of going dry and grey.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Enriched rolls of this size want 400F for 15 to 20 minutes, until well browned and hollow-sounding.
- The ice-boxAn ice box ran warmer than a modern refrigerator, so the dough kept rising slowly and had to be used up. At 38F it will be sluggish — allow well over the stated hour for the final rise, and punch the dough down each day. Use it within three or four days.
- YieldA quart of milk and, on the most generous reading of the corrupted flour figures, upwards of three quarts of flour makes a very large batch — several dozen rolls. Halving it is sensible for a household kitchen.
Refrigerator or "ice box" doughs were a staple of American community cookbooks, and they exist because of one piece of household technology: the insulated ice chest, which gave cooks a reliably cool place to park a living dough. The appeal was stated plainly in the recipe itself: a dough that bought hot fresh rolls each day from one long session of mixing and kneading. The mashed potato is older than the ice box and belongs to a long tradition of potato breads, valued for keeping the crumb soft and, in leaner years, for stretching the flour. A cookbook like this one collected such recipes precisely because they scaled: the same dough that fed a family at supper could be baked off in quantity for a larger gathering.