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Cornmeal Rolls
2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 egg ½ cupful milk 1 tablespoonful sugar 1/2 teaspoonful salt 3/4 cupful cornmeal 4 teaspoonfuls baking powder Sift together flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Rub in Crisco with finger tips, then add egg well beaten and milk. Roll out, cut into rounds with a large cutter, brush over with melted Crisco, fold over as for Parkerhouse rolls, brush tops with beaten egg or milk and bake in hot oven ten minutes.
Sufficient for fifteen rolls. 2 cupfuls flour
A quick biscuit-style dough stiffened with cornmeal and folded like Parker House rolls. The ingredient list is printed out of order in the original, with the flour trailing at the end; it belongs in the first sifting.
- Hot oven"Hot oven" in period cookery generally meant somewhere in the region of 400-450F; the tables of the day are not consistent. Ten minutes at that heat suits a thin folded round; the rolls should be set and lightly coloured, not deeply browned.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated to remove trans fats. Any solid vegetable shortening works. Rub it into the dry mix until it looks like coarse meal, exactly as for biscuits, and keep it cool so the fat stays in flecks.
- The liquid is shortHalf a cupful of milk plus one egg for 2 cupfuls flour and 3/4 cupful cornmeal makes a very stiff dough by modern measure. Expect to add milk a spoonful at a time until it just holds together and can be rolled; the original assumes a cook who judged this by feel.
- Cornmeal grindUse fine or medium yellow cornmeal, not coarse polenta grind, or the dough will tear when rolled and the rolls will be gritty. Coarse meal benefits from soaking in the milk for ten minutes first.
- Baking powderFour teaspoonfuls is generous but not unreasonable for nearly three cupfuls of dry ingredients, since cornmeal carries no gluten and the dough needs lift. Modern double-acting powder is stronger than some 1913 brands; three teaspoonfuls gives a cleaner flavour.
- The Parker House foldThe recipe specifies only "a large cutter"; cut generous rounds, brush with melted shortening, then crease slightly off-centre and fold so the top overhangs. The fat on the inside helps the fold open in the oven rather than seal shut.
- YieldFifteen rolls, as stated. They stale quickly, like all cornmeal quick breads, and are best within an hour of baking.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, two years after the company launched Crisco as the first widely marketed all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening. The book's job was to prove that a cook could substitute the new fat anywhere lard or butter had been used, which is why every recipe names it by brand and why it appears in dishes as ordinary as a supper roll. Cornmeal rolls themselves are older than the shortening: cornmeal quick breads folded or cut like wheat rolls were a Southern and mid-Atlantic habit, a way of stretching flour with a cheaper native grain while keeping the shape and softness of a raised roll. The Parker House fold, generally traced to the Boston hotel of that name in the later nineteenth century, was by 1913 simply what a nice dinner roll looked like.