Rye Muffins
1 cupful flour 2 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 1 cupful ryemeal 2 tablespoonfuls brown sugar 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 egg 1/2 teaspoonful salt 1 cupful milk Sift flour, meal, baking powder, and salt together. Beat egg and sugar together, then add them with milk and melted Crisco. Mix and divide into Criscoed gem pans and bake in moderate oven twelve minutes. Sufficient for twelve muffins.
A plain quick-bread muffin from a promotional cookbook, so every fat measurement is Crisco. It converts easily, but the meal and the pan size need attention.
- RyemealThis means coarsely ground whole rye, closer to a meal than to the fine white rye flour sold for bread. Medium or dark rye flour works; pumpernickel-grind rye meal is the closest match and gives the intended texture.
- CriscoVegetable shortening, still available, though the formula has been reformulated and is no longer hydrogenated the same way. Melted butter or a neutral oil substitutes one for one, with butter adding a flavour the shortening does not have.
- Gem pansCast-iron gem pans are generally smaller than a modern standard muffin cup, though capacity varied by pattern. In a standard 12-cup tin the cups will sit well below full.
- Moderate oven350F. Some period books push moderate to 375F, which suits small muffins better and gives a bit more lift.
- Twelve minutesShort for a full-size muffin. Twelve minutes is plausible for shallow iron gems; in a modern tin expect 16 to 20 minutes, until the tops spring back and a skewer comes out clean.
- MixingThe method has you combine wet and dry in one go, and that is right for muffins. Stir only until the flour disappears; rye has little gluten but overworking still toughens the crumb.
- SweetnessTwo tablespoons of brown sugar makes a barely sweet muffin, better suited to eating with butter alongside a meal than as a breakfast cake. Doubling it changes the character but will not break the batter.
- YieldThe recipe says twelve. In a modern standard tin you may get somewhat fewer, larger muffins. They stale quickly, as rye quick breads do, and are best the day they are baked.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble as an advertising cookbook for Crisco, introduced in 1911 and marketed as an all-vegetable shortening. That explains why the recipes call for it by name and why the pans are "Criscoed" rather than greased. The rye itself points to older American baking habits: rye and rye-and-Indian breads were staples in the Northeast well before wheat flour became cheap and universal, and by the 1910s rye turns up in home baking in softened forms like this one, cut half-and-half with white flour and leavened with baking powder rather than a long ferment. The result is a compromise loaf-in-miniature, familiar enough in flavour to sell a new fat to cautious cooks.