Egg Bolls

Source: Abby Fisher, 1881

History

"Egg Bolls" is a recipe for enriched, yeast-raised breakfast rolls set down by Abby Fisher in her 1881 book "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking," published in San Francisco. The printed recipe calls for "One quart of flour, half tablespoonful of butter, two eggs lightly beat, half tea-cup of sweet yeast, half tea-cup of water, one teaspoonful of salt," mixed into a sponge the night before, left to rise overnight, then kneaded with dry flour, shaped into rolls, proofed in the baking pan, and baked slowly so they are ready for breakfast.

Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton, and by the late 1870s had settled in San Francisco, where she and her husband ran a pickle and preserves business. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. She won two medals at the 1880 San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair and a diploma at the 1879 Sacramento State Fair. Because she could neither read nor write, she dictated the book to others — in her own preface she notes she was "Not being able to read or write myself" — and it stands as the second known cookbook by a Black woman published in the United States, after Malinda Russell's "Domestic Cook Book" (1866).

This recipe is best understood as Fisher's own record of the Southern cooking she mastered and published under her own name. The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular dish; it is preserved here as she set it down.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Mix flour, butter, lightly beaten eggs, sweet yeast, water, and salt together as a sponge about 10 o'clock at night.
  2. Let the sponge rise until morning.
  3. Knead the sponge with dry flour, making it not too stiff.
  4. Shape the dough into rolls.
  5. Place the rolls in a baking pan to rise.
  6. Heat the oven and bake the rolls slowly.
  7. When the rolls are done, put them in a napkin until sent to table.

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