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Parker House Rolls
2 cups scalded milk yeast cake 4 cup lukewarm water 1/4 cup butter melted 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt flour Mix scalded milk when cool, with dissolved yeast cake. Add two cups flour; beat thoroughly and let rise.
When spongy add remaining ingredients and flour to knead. Knead; let rise; when double its bulk, shape into balls; lay on buttered sheet; cover with dripping pan. When risen to double their bulk, press with floured handle of spoon almost dividing the biscuit. Brush one half with butter; press the two halves together; place on buttered tin; let rise. Bake when light ten to fifteen minutes.
A standard turn-of-the-century sponge-and-dough roll, written for a cook who already knew what bread dough should feel like. The gaps are in the quantities and the oven, not the method.
- YeastOne compressed yeast cake of the period is roughly equivalent to one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast. Dissolve it in 1/4 cup water at about 105F, not hotter.
- Flour, unmeasuredThe list gives no amount because the sponge takes two cups and the rest is added by feel. Expect 5 to 6 cups total bread or all-purpose flour for two cups of milk; stop when the dough is soft but no longer sticky.
- Scalded milkScalding raw milk was standard practice, usually explained as deactivating whey components that slacken dough, and it also served keeping quality. With pasteurized milk it is generally treated as optional, but the recipe depends on the milk being cooled to lukewarm before it meets the yeast.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. These rolls want a hot oven, 400 to 425F, which is consistent with the ten to fifteen minute bake.
- "Cover with dripping pan"An inverted roasting pan set over the sheet, trapping humidity so the surface stays soft and extensible during the rise. Loosely draped plastic or a large upturned bowl does the same work.
- The foldPress the floured spoon handle deep, almost through, so the crease survives proofing and baking. Butter one half before folding: the fat keeps the seam from sealing and gives the roll its hinge.
- YieldTwo cups of milk gives about 24 rolls at roughly 2 oz of dough each. Bake until the tops are deep gold; the interiors should read near 190F.
Parker House rolls are named for the Parker House hotel in Boston, which opened in 1855 and whose kitchen is traditionally credited with the folded, buttered dinner roll sometime in the following decades. The story usually told involves a cook folding unfinished rolls in temper or haste, which is the sort of origin tale that circulates without documentation; what is certain is that by the 1880s and 1890s the form was famous enough that cookbooks printed it under the hotel's name without explanation. Lowney's, a Boston chocolate company's promotional cook book compiled in the orbit of the Boston Cooking School, would have treated the rolls as local common knowledge, leaving the flour to the cook's judgment and the oven to her experience.