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Rolls
1 cup boiling water. 1 cup scalded milk. 4 tablespoons sugar. 1 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons fat Flour (6 to 8 cups) Follow directions for making bread. Mashed potato may be used, and less liquid and flour is required. 1 yeast cake mixed with 1 cup lukewarm water 1 yeast cake mixed with 1/4 cup lukewarm water.
This is a skeleton rather than a full recipe — the book expects you to have read the bread instructions a few pages earlier, and the ingredient list is printed out of order with at least one quantity missing. Here is what it assumes you already know.
- The missing liquidThe list gives only the 1 cup of lukewarm water used to dissolve the yeast; the milk or water for the dough itself is not stated. For 6 to 8 cups of flour a total of about 2 to 2½ cups of liquid, the yeast water included, is the usual proportion. Add the flour gradually and stop when the dough is soft but no longer sticky rather than trusting the printed range.
- Yeast cakeA yeast cake of this kind was a compressed fresh cake, commonly around 0.6 oz, though sizes varied. Substitute one packet, about 2¼ teaspoons, of active dry yeast, dissolved in the lukewarm water as written. Lukewarm means roughly 95–110F; water much hotter than that (above about 120F) will damage the yeast.
- Fat"Fat" in a bread chapter of this kind means lard, butter or vegetable shortening, whichever the house had. Three tablespoons for this much flour gives a soft, tender roll rather than a lean crust; melted butter is the easiest modern reading.
- No sugar listedNo sugar appears in this list; the bread directions the recipe defers to may supply it. Yeast will work faster with a little sugar, but the dough does not require it.
- The potato variationMashed potato is the point worth trying: about 1 cup of plain unseasoned mashed potato, cooled, gives a moister crumb and rolls that stay soft a day longer. Because the potato carries water, cut the added liquid back and expect to need nearer 6 cups of flour than 8.
- OvenRolls, being small, bake at 400–425F for 15 to 20 minutes, until well browned and hollow-sounding — not the 45 minutes to an hour a full loaf takes.
- RisingTwo rises: the bulk rise until doubled, then shape and let the rolls rise on the pan until they look puffed and hold a slight dent. In a modern warm kitchen this is roughly an hour and then 30 to 45 minutes, faster than the older books allowed for a cool pantry.
- YieldSix to eight cups of flour makes about two to two and a half dozen rolls of ordinary dinner size.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and given away to policyholders — one of the great free-cookbook campaigns of the early twentieth century, alongside those of the flour and baking powder companies. That distribution explains the terseness here: the book was compact, printed cheaply in enormous numbers, and organised so that the roll entry was reduced to the proportions that differed from the bread directions. The potato variation is older than the book and is often said to have been common in home baking before commercial dough conditioners; the starch and moisture in cooked potato keep the crumb soft, which is why potato rolls survive as a bakery style. Insurance-company cookbooks like this one were framed as health work — Metropolitan employed visiting nurses and pushed dietary advice at the same time — so the recipes lean plain, economical and unfussy rather than showy.