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Parker House Rolls
Make dough as for Standard Biscuit. Roll to 1/6 inch in thickness. Cut with a round or oval cutter and crease in center with the handle of a caseknife, first dipped in flour. Brush half of the round with melted butter and fold over. Put in a pan ½ inch apart and bake in a quick oven 15 minutes.
A cross-reference recipe: everything that gives the roll its character happens in the dough you are told to make elsewhere, and in the fold. A few points fill the gaps.
- The dough is the whole recipeParker House rolls are normally a yeast-raised dinner-roll dough — milk, butter, sugar, salt, flour and yeast — rather than a chemically leavened American biscuit. What this book's "Standard Biscuit" actually contains can only be settled by turning to that recipe; if it is baking-powder based, the fold will not open.
- The rising the text omitsNo proofing time is given here; it was left to the earlier recipe. If that dough is yeast-raised, shaped rolls will want a second rise until visibly puffy, perhaps 30-45 minutes in a warm kitchen, before they go into the oven.
- A quick ovenThe book gives no temperature; "quick oven" is generally taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. Fifteen minutes at that heat suits rolls of this size; they should be deep gold, and the fold should have opened rather than fused.
- 1/6 inch is almost certainly a misprint or a very loose measure1/6 inch is a very thin sheet -- thinner than most versions of this roll, which are generally rolled nearer a quarter inch or more. Whether the figure is a misprint or simply a loose measure cannot be settled from the text.
- CaseknifeAn ordinary table knife, as distinct from a pocket or clasp knife. Floured, the handle presses the groove along which the round is folded; the recipe puts that crease in the centre.
- Half an inch apartClose enough that the rolls touch as they rise and bake, giving soft pull-apart sides and a crust only on top. Spread them further and they dry out.
- Butter, twiceMelted butter inside the fold is what lets the two halves separate. A second brushing as they leave the oven is often done, though the recipe does not mention it.
- YieldThe number of rolls depends on the referenced dough, whose quantity is not given here, and on the size of cutter used. Best within hours of baking; they stale quickly.
The roll takes its name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened by Harvey D. Parker in the mid-nineteenth century and long famous for its kitchen. The folded shape is traditionally said to have originated there with a baker who, in a temper or a hurry, folded partly finished rolls and shoved them in the oven anyway — a story repeated in print for well over a century and documented nowhere. What is certain is that by the 1880s and 1890s "Parker House rolls" had escaped the hotel entirely and turn up in American cookbooks of the period, which is why a compilation like this one can print it in four lines and simply point back to a basic dough.