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Parker House Rolls

Soft rolls made with flour, butter, lard, milk, yeast, sugar, and salt, brushed with butter and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 the dough

  1. Rub the butter and lard into the flour.

  2. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, yeast, sugar, and salt.

Rise overnight

  1. Do not stir; let it stand overnight.

  2. The next morning, stir, knead, and let rise until near tea time.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut with a biscuit cutter.

  2. Brush melted butter on one half and fold over the other half.

  3. Place the rolls about ¾ inch apart in a pan and bake 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. 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. Butter + sugartop 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 and chew.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the rolls rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and softens the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb soft and tender.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Leaving the dough overnight without stirring. Slow yeast fermentation over a long, cool rest builds flavor and gas gradually. Stirring early would knock out gas and disturb the gluten, so the dough should be left alone until morning.

“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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