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Corn or Entire Wheat Muffins
1 Cupful Cornmeal or Entire Wheat Flour 1 Cupful Bread Flour 2 Tablespoonfuls Sugar 3 Teaspoonfuls Baking Powder 1 Teaspoonful Salt 1 Egg From 1 to 1/4 Cupfuls Milk 2 Tablespoonfuls Melted Snowdrift Beat the egg in the mixing-bowl, add the milk, and gradually beat in the dry ingredients, thoroughly mixed. Stir in the Snowdrift and beat well. Use the cupful of milk for the Entire Wheat Muffins; the one and one-fourth cupfuls for the Corn Muffins. Drop into muffin-pans well oiled with Snowdrift and bake from twenty-five to thirty minutes in a hot oven, 375 degrees F.
A straightforward promotional-cookbook muffin, built to work two ways from one formula. Two details in the printed text need sorting out before you start.
- The milk quantity is a typo"From 1 to 1/4 Cupfuls" should read 1 to 1 1/4 cupfuls, as the note further down confirms: 1 cup for the whole wheat version, 1 1/4 cups for the cornmeal. Whole wheat and cornmeal absorb liquid differently, which is why the two batters are not identical.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company (hydrogenated in its later formulations), the whole reason this book exists. Melted vegetable shortening, a neutral oil, or melted butter all stand in for the two tablespoons; the pan greasing can be any oil or a paper liner.
- Entire wheat flourThe period term for whole wheat flour. It was often slightly coarser than today's, but modern whole wheat works without adjustment here.
- Bread flour is not essentialAll-purpose flour gives a more tender crumb and is the better choice unless you want the chew. The bread flour is there to give structure alongside a cup of low-gluten cornmeal or bran-heavy wheat.
- Beat well, but not for longThe instruction to "beat well" belongs to an era before the modern rule about muffin batter. Mix only until the dry streaks disappear; prolonged beating develops gluten and produces tunnels and a rubbery top.
- Time versus temperature375F is what the recipe specifies, and period gem pans were often deeper than modern ones, which may explain the long time. In standard 12-cup tins expect closer to 18 to 22 minutes; test with a skewer and for tops that spring back.
- YieldAbout 10 to 12 standard muffins. Fill the cups two-thirds full and put water in any empty ones.
A New Snowdrift Cook Book belongs to a genre that flourished from the 1890s through the 1920s: the manufacturer's recipe booklet, given away or sold cheaply to teach cooks to use a new product. Snowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening from the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and cottonseed oil, once a cheap byproduct of the cotton gin, had by this period been refined and hardened into a direct competitor to lard and butter in American baking. The recipe's real work is done by the brand name, which appears twice in four lines of instruction. The pairing of cornmeal and "entire wheat" in a single formula also reflects the era's enthusiasm for whole grains, often associated with domestic-science writers who are said to have treated bran and cornmeal as nutritionally superior to white flour, and the double-barrelled title lets one page of print sell two muffins.