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Parker House Rolls
One teacupful of home-made yeast, or one compressed yeast cake, a little salt,one tablespoonful of sugar, lard-a piece the size of an egg, one pint of milk, flour sufficient to mix. Put the milk on the stove to scald with the lard in it. Prepare the flour with salt, sugar and yeast. Then add the milk, not too hot. Knead thoroughly when mixed at night; in the morning but very slight kneading is necessary. Then roll out and cut with biscuit cutter. Spread a little butter on each roll and lap together. Let them rise very light; then bake in a quick oven.
A straightforward overnight milk-and-lard roll dough. The only real difficulties are the vague quantities and the two undefined leaveners.
- LeaveningA compressed yeast cake is usually reckoned at about 0.6 oz today, though period cakes varied in size; substitute roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast. The alternative teacupful of home-made yeast would have been a liquid barm, perhaps 3/4 cup of thin batter, so if you were working from that version you would hold back a corresponding amount of flour.
- "Flour sufficient to mix"For one pint of milk expect about 5 to 5 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, added until the dough is soft but no longer sticky. Flour of the period varied more than ours, which may be part of why no number is given.
- Lard the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 1/4 cup. Butter or shortening works in its place, though the original calls for lard.
- Scalding the milkScalding was thought to counter something in raw milk that weakens gluten, and it also served to make raw milk keep. With pasteurized milk it is unnecessary; simply warm the milk enough to melt the fat, then cool it to about 110F before it meets the yeast.
- The overnight riseMixed and kneaded at night, the dough ferments slowly in a cool kitchen, which is where the flavor comes from. A modern equivalent is 8 to 12 hours in the refrigerator; a warm room will overproof it well before morning.
- The foldCut rounds, butter them, then fold each over on itself; the familiar Parker House method is to crease slightly off-centre so the edges do not quite meet. The butter keeps the halves from sealing, and the roll opens along that seam as it bakes.
- OvenA quick oven is generally reckoned at about 400 to 425F. These rolls want roughly 12 to 15 minutes at that heat; longer and the thin folded edge dries out.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 rolls from a pint of milk, depending on the size of the cutter. "Let them rise very light" means proofing until visibly puffed and slack to the touch, roughly 45 minutes in a warm room.
The roll takes its name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened by Harvey Parker in 1855, and the folded shape it made famous appears to have been imitated in American cookbooks not long after. The origin story usually told, that an irritated baker flung unfinished rolls into the oven half-folded, is traditional rather than documented, and the fold is more plausibly a deliberate trick for producing a soft seam and a buttery crease. What seems likely is that by the time this book was compiled the name had largely loosened from the hotel and simply meant a rich, milk-based folded dinner roll, made overnight in a home kitchen with whatever yeast the cook had on hand: a jar of her own barm, or one of the compressed cakes that commercial yeast companies had made available at the grocer's.