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Parker House Rolls
Two cupfuls of scalded milk, 3 tablespoonfuls of butter or lard, 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar, 1 teaspoonful of salt, I yeast cake dissolved in 1/4 cupful of lukewarm water, flour enough to make batter, about 3 cupfuls. Add butter, sugar, salt to milk; when lukewarm add dissolved yeast cake and flour. Beat thoroughly, cover and let raise until light. Cut down, add enough flour to knead. Let raise again. Roll out thin, cut with large biscuit cutter, brush the tops with melted butter, fold over, let raise again and bake in hot oven twelve to fifteen minutes.
A straightforward sponge-and-dough roll; the only unfamiliar parts are the yeast measurement and the vague flour quantity. Read the two flour additions as separate stages, not a total.
- The yeast cakeOne yeast cake meant a small block of compressed fresh yeast, roughly 0.6 oz. Substitute 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry yeast, still dissolved in the 1/4 cup of lukewarm water.
- Scalding the milkMilk was scalded partly for keeping quality when milk was raw, and it is often said to deal with something in the whey that slackens gluten. With pasteurized milk it is not strictly necessary, though heating does dissolve the butter and sugar quickly. Either way, let it cool to lukewarm, about 110F, before the yeast goes in; much hotter and the yeast will be killed.
- How much flour, reallyThe 3 cupfuls make only the loose sponge. Expect to add another 2 to 2 1/2 cups at the kneading stage, for 5 to 5 1/2 cups total. The dough should be soft and slightly tacky, not stiff.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'hot oven' in this period is usually read as 400-425F. Twelve to fifteen minutes at that heat suits rolls of this size; they should be deep gold, not pale.
- Rise timesThe recipe gives none. The sponge takes about an hour until bubbly and domed, the kneaded dough about an hour until doubled, and the shaped rolls 30 to 40 minutes until visibly puffed.
- The fold is the whole pointRoll to about 1/4 inch, cut 2 1/2 to 3 inch rounds, butter the surface, then crease each round slightly off-center with the back of a knife before folding so the top overlaps the bottom. The butter keeps the halves from sealing, which is what gives the roll its hinged, pull-apart seam.
- Butter or lardLard was the cheaper option and gives a slightly softer crumb; butter gives more flavor. Either works at 3 tablespoons.
- YieldAbout 24 rolls. They are best within hours of baking and stale quickly, as enriched doughs without preservatives do.
The roll takes its name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened by Harvey Parker in 1855, where the folded rolls became a fixture of the dining room and were widely imitated; the story that a cook flung unfinished dough into the oven in a temper is traditional rather than documented. By the time this book was printed the name had long since escaped the hotel and become a generic term in American cookbooks for any soft, buttered, folded dinner roll. Its appearance in a collection of low-cost recipes is telling: milk, flour, sugar and a cake of yeast produced something a household could recognize as hotel food, and the fold did the work that no expensive ingredient had to.