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Parker House Rolls

Parker House Rolls are yeast rolls made with flour, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, lard, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Parker House Rolls

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Parker House Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, and lard.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the mixture, except for the yeast, and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Mix the ingredients early in the morning.

Shape the rolls

  1. Knead the dough at noon, adding enough flour to make it as stiff as biscuit dough.

  2. Once the dough is light, shape it into rolls.

  3. Roll out the dough thinly, cut with a biscuit cutter, and roll oblong.

  4. Spread a little butter on one end and fold over.

  5. Let the rolls rise on the pans before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the rolls their structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands for a more tender texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning during baking.

The step that matters

Cool the boiling milk to lukewarm before the yeast works. Yeast is damaged by high heat, so very hot liquid can kill it and stop the dough from rising. Lukewarm liquid keeps the yeast active so the dough becomes light.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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