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Wheat Muffins
3 tablespoons Cottolene. 1/4 cup sugar. 3/4 cup thin cream or milk. 4 teaspoons baking powder. 2 cups flour. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 1 egg beaten very light.
PROCESS: Cream the Cottolene with a wooden spoon. Add sugar gradually, then alternately cream and flour sifted with baking powder and salt. Add well-beaten egg. Bake in hot, well-buttered gem cups. A cup of blueberries may be added to this mixture for blueberry tea cakes or one-fourth pound dates may be stoned, chopped and added to the butter and sugar for date muffins.
A plain quick-bread muffin from a book underwritten by a shortening manufacturer, which explains the fat called for. Everything here translates directly to a modern muffin tin.
- CottoleneA branded cottonseed-oil shortening sold by N. K. Fairbank & Co., long discontinued. Use 3 tablespoons of any solid vegetable shortening, or softened butter, which will give better flavour.
- Gem cupsCast-iron gem pans, heated in the oven before the batter went in. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works; preheating it briefly gives a better rise and crisper edge, and grease it well since these have little fat.
- Oven heatNo oven temperature is given; the recipe's "hot" describes the gem cups, not the oven. Bake at 400-425F for 18-22 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.
- Thin creamRoughly the fat content of today's half-and-half or light cream. Whole milk is the stated alternative and works without adjustment.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is high by modern standards. Two to three teaspoons of today's double-acting powder is closer to current practice; the full four may leave a chemical aftertaste.
- MixingDespite the creaming method, this is still a quick bread. Stop stirring as soon as the flour disappears -- overworking develops gluten and gives tough, tunnelled muffins.
- The datesThe text says to add them "to the butter and sugar," a slip for the Cottolene and sugar. Chopped dates go in with the creamed fat so they separate; toss blueberries in a spoonful of the flour before folding them in at the end.
- YieldAbout twelve standard muffins. Best within a few hours of baking.
52 Sunday Dinners was published in 1913 by the N. K. Fairbank Company as an advertising cookbook for Cottolene, a shortening made from cottonseed oil and beef suet, which is why the brand name stands where a modern book would simply say butter or lard. Cottonseed oil was a by-product of the American cotton industry that food manufacturers spent the late nineteenth century turning into a cheap kitchen fat, and promotional cookbooks like this one were one of the ways of persuading housewives to trust it. The muffins themselves are unremarkable -- "wheat muffins" apparently distinguishes them from the corn, rye and graham gems that shared the same pans -- with blueberry and date variations following. Gem pans, heavy cast-iron trays of shallow cups, were standard equipment in an American kitchen of the period and were heated empty on the range or in the oven before the batter was dropped in.