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Parker House Rolls

A yeasted roll made with milk, butter, lard, sugar, salt, eggs, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Parker House Rolls

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 the dough

  1. Scald the milk, butter, and lard in a saucepan.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the dissolved yeast, salt, and sugar.

  3. Stir in a little flour and the eggs.

  4. Add enough flour to form a kneadable dough.

  5. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough using a glass or cup, butter one side, and let it rise again.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Milk
Adds moisture and richness, producing a soft, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape and brown.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, softening the crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes to browning and a mildly sweet flavor.
Flour
Forms gluten when kneaded, giving the dough its elastic structure.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas for the dough to expand fully; rising too little leaves dense rolls, while over-rising can cause them to collapse or taste sour.

“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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