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Milk Rolls
Sift in a basin three-quarters of a pound of flour, add four heaping tablespoonfuls corn starch, and one pound salt. Warm two tablespoonfuls butter in one pint of milk, add one compressed yeast cake mixed with one teaspoonful sugar. Pour them among the flour, mix well and allow the dough to rise in a warm place. Knead it and make into rolls, allow them to rise again, then bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes.
A straightforward enriched yeast roll, but the printed proportions have at least one clear typesetting error and one ratio that will not behave as written.
- The salt is a misprint"One pound salt" against three-quarters of a pound of flour is impossible; it would be inedible and would kill the yeast outright. Read it as one teaspoonful, which is the standard proportion for this quantity of dough.
- Weigh the flourThree-quarters of a pound is about 2 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour. Because the recipe is given by weight, a scale gets you closer than cups.
- Expect to add flourA full pint of milk to 12 oz of flour gives a batter, not a kneadable dough. Start with the milk warm at about 110F, mix, then work in flour until the dough is soft but coherent — figure on another cup or more.
- Corn starchFour heaping tablespoons of corn starch lowers the overall protein and gives a tender, cakey crumb. It is doing the job a modern recipe would give to cake flour or a little potato starch.
- Compressed yeastOne cake of compressed yeast is roughly 0.6 oz, equivalent to about 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast. The teaspoonful of sugar is creamed with the cake to soften and disperse it; instant yeast needs no such start.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. Twenty minutes at that heat suits small rolls; they should sound hollow and read 190-200F inside.
- Rising timesThe original gives none. Allow about an hour for the first rise until doubled, then 30-40 minutes for the shaped rolls, judging by the dough rather than the clock in a warm kitchen.
- YieldAbout a dozen and a half small rolls, best eaten the day they are baked.
Milk rolls belong to the late-nineteenth-century vogue for soft, enriched breakfast breads, made possible for ordinary households by reliable compressed yeast, which reached American kitchens commercially in the 1870s and 1880s and replaced the homemade hop or potato ferments that earlier cookbooks assumed. The corn starch is the period's signature touch: cheap, shelf-stable and heavily promoted by manufacturers, it was added to breads and cakes to lighten the crumb. Cookbooks collected such recipes because the compressed-yeast method, unlike a sponge set overnight, could be started and finished in a single morning — a small daily proof of competence.