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Warm one quart new milk, add one cup butter or lard, four tablespoons sugar, and two well-beaten eggs; stir in flour enough to make a moderately stiff sponge, add a small cup of yeast, and set in a warm place to rise, which will take three or four hours; then mix in flour enough to make a soft dough and let rise again. When well risen, dissolve a lump of soda size of a bean in a spoon of milk, work it into the dough and roll into sheets one-half inch in thickness; spread with thin layer of butter, cut into squares, and fold over, pocket-book shape; put on tins or in pans to rise for a little while, when they will be fit for the oven. In summer the sponge can be made up in the morning, and rise in time to make for tea. In cool weather it is best to set it over night. - Mrs. J. H. Shearer.
A soft enriched roll built on a sponge, folded over a layer of butter so it opens along the seam like a clasp purse. The quantities are for a household batch and the flour is left to the cook's judgment.
- Scale it downThe flour is left to the cook's judgment; a quart of milk with a cup of fat and two eggs will take somewhere in the region of 10 to 12 cups and yields several dozen rolls. Halving is straightforward; quartering leaves you dividing two eggs.
- The yeastA "small cup of yeast" means homemade liquid barm, not a modern packet. Substitute 2 1/4 teaspoons instant or active dry yeast for the whole quart-of-milk batch; the long three-to-four-hour sponge is what develops the flavor, so do not rush it with more.
- That lump of sodaBean-size is about 1/4 teaspoon. It is there to neutralize the acidity a long, warm, wild-yeast rise produces. With commercial yeast and a controlled rise the dough will not be sour, and the soda can be left out; too much gives a soapy taste and a yellowish crumb.
- New milk'New' means fresh, unskimmed milk straight from the cow. The recipe asks only that it be warmed; warm ordinary pasteurized milk to about 105F before adding the yeast.
- Butter or lardOne cup of butter is 8 ounces. Lard gives a tender, slightly flaky crumb, butter more flavor; the recipe allows either, or a mix of the two.
- The fold is the pointRoll to a true half inch, spread the butter thin and cold-ish rather than melted, and press only the outer edge of the fold. A heavy hand seals the seam and the roll bakes solid instead of splitting open.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven guidance beyond saying the rolls will be 'fit for the oven'. Bake at 400F for 12 to 15 minutes, until the tops are deep gold; brush with melted butter as they come out.
- Timing the dayThe recipe's own preference is an overnight sponge in cool weather and a morning sponge in summer. A refrigerated overnight rise is the nearest modern equivalent to a cold pantry; bring the dough back to room temperature before the final shaping or the rolls will be slow and dense.
Folded, butter-layered rolls of this sort circulated under many names in nineteenth-century American cookery — pocket-books, pocketbook rolls, and later Parker House rolls after the Boston hotel with which the shape is generally associated. The name is literal: the folded square opens at the seam like a clasp purse, and the butter between the layers keeps the fold from knitting shut. What dates this version is the sponge method and the pinch of soda. Before reliable packaged yeast, a cook kept a liquid barm going in the kitchen, and a long warm rise on wild yeast and lactic bacteria left the dough noticeably sour, so a bean of soda was worked in at the end to correct it. The instruction to set the sponge overnight in cool weather and in the morning in summer is a reminder that fermentation was governed by the season and the stove, not a thermostat, and that these rolls were expected on the tea table rather than bought.