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Parker House Rolls
1 cake FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1 pint milk, scalded and cooled 2 tablespoonfuls sugar 4 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, melted 3 pints sifted flour 1 teaspoonful salt Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm milk, add lard or butter and one and one-half pints of flour. Beat until perfectly smooth. Cover and let rise in a warm place one hour, or until light. or Then add remainder of flour, enough to make a dough, and the salt.
Knead well, or "throw and roll." Place in greased bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm place for about one and one-half hours, or until double in bulk.
Roll out one-fourth inch thick. Brush over lightly with melted butter, cut with two-inch biscuit cutter, crease through center heavily with dull edge of knife, and fold over in pocket-book shape. 1 2 4 1 1 cups sifted flour egg teaspoonful salt Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm milk. Add lard or butter and two cups of flour. Beat thoroughly, then add egg well beaten, balance of flour gradually, and salt.
When all of the flour is added, or enough to make a dough that can be handled, turn on board and knead lightly and thoroughly, using as little flour in the kneading as possible. Place in wellgreased bowl. Cover and set aside in a warm place, free from draft, to rise about two hours.
When light, form into small biscuits the size of a walnut. Place one inch apart, in well-greased shallow pans. Let rise until double in bulk about half an hour. Brush with egg and milk, and bake ten minutes in hot oven.
The text as printed runs two recipes together: the Parker House rolls proper, and a second, egg-enriched dough (probably the book's plain or "tea" rolls) whose ingredient list survives only as a column of stray numbers. Work from the first set of quantities and treat everything from "cups sifted flour egg teaspoonful salt" onward as a separate recipe.
- The yeastOne cake of Fleischmann's was fresh compressed yeast, generally reckoned the equivalent of about 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast; the familiar small cake ran 0.6 oz, though cake sizes varied. Dry yeast can go straight into the scalded-and-cooled milk with the sugar as written.
- Milk temperatureScalding was done to knock out substances in unheated milk (whey proteins, glutathione) that slacken gluten; with pasteurised milk it is largely optional, but the milk must still be cooled to lukewarm, blood heat or a little above, before the yeast goes in. Hot milk kills the yeast outright.
- Measures1 pint milk is 2 cups. 3 pints sifted flour is 6 cups, and 1 1/2 pints is 3 cups. Sift or aerate the flour before measuring, as the recipe assumes; scooped flour will run 15-20 percent heavier and give a stiff dough.
- The missing ovenThe Parker House instructions stop at shaping. Bake the folded rolls in a hot oven, 400-425F, for 12-15 minutes, until well browned. The second recipe's "hot oven, ten minutes" means the same 400-425F for small walnut-sized rolls.
- "Throw and roll"An old kneading style, the phrase left unexplained here, apparently involving slapping the dough down on the board and rolling it up on itself. Whatever the exact motion, ten minutes of ordinary kneading, or five minutes in a stand mixer with the dough hook, does the same job.
- The fold is the pointRoll only a scant quarter inch thick, butter generously, and crease hard with the back of a knife before folding. The heavy crease is what keeps the roll from springing open in the oven and what gives Parker House rolls their split, hinged shape and soft interior seam.
- Proof the shaped rollsThe Parker House method as printed goes from shaping to nothing; the shaped rolls need a third rise, about 30-45 minutes on a greased pan until visibly puffed, before baking. The second recipe does specify this half-hour proof.
- YieldSix cups of flour makes a large batch: expect about three dozen two-inch rolls, or four dozen of the small walnut-sized ones. Half the recipe suits a modern household.
The Bride's Cook Book was one of a long series of promotional booklets issued by the Fleischmann Company, whose compressed yeast cake, sold fresh and delivered like milk, is why every recipe here begins "1 cake Fleischmann's Yeast." The rolls themselves take their name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened by Harvey D. Parker in 1855; the folded roll is traditionally credited to a baker there in the 1870s, though the various accounts of who and exactly when are hotel lore rather than documented fact. By the time this booklet appeared the name had long since escaped the hotel and become a generic term for any soft, buttery, folded dinner roll, which is why a yeast company could print it without explanation and expect a new bride to know what she was aiming at.