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Baltimore Gems
Two cups flour, one cup milk, two tablespoons melted butter, one tablespoon sugar, three teaspoons baking powder, heaped, a little salt. Bake in well heated gem pans, in a het oven.
A plain, eggless quick bread that depends almost entirely on a fiercely hot pan and a fiercely hot oven. Everything else is a formality.
- Heat the pans firstThis is the hinge. The recipe calls for "well heated gem pans": greased iron pans brought up to heat in the oven before the batter goes in. The batter should hiss as it hits the iron, and that instant set is what gives gems their crisp shell.
- Gem pansHeavy cast-iron pans with shallow oval or round cups, an early form of the muffin pan. A cast-iron muffin pan is the direct substitute. Modern nonstick tins work but will not preheat as aggressively and give a softer crust.
- "A het oven"Either a misprint or a dialect spelling of "hot" -- read as a hot oven, roughly 425 to 450F. Do not moderate it; at 350F this batter, having no egg to set it, is likely to slump and bake pale.
- Three heaped teaspoons of baking powderGenerous by current standards, where about a teaspoon per cup of flour is normal. Period powders were single-acting and of variable strength; with a modern brand, three level teaspoons is plenty, and more can leave a soapy edge.
- No eggsThere is no egg in the formula. Expect a coarser, more bread-like crumb than a modern muffin.
- FlourSoft winter wheat flour, lower in protein than standard all-purpose, was common in the region and would suit this batter. A mix of all-purpose with a little cake flour, or a soft Southern brand, gives a more tender result. Mix only until the dry flour disappears.
- Yield and timingRoughly eight to twelve gems depending on cup size, baked about 15 minutes until domed and browned. Serve them straight from the pan; they are best hot and stale quickly.
Gems were a fixture of nineteenth-century American breakfast tables, associated with the heavy iron pans that produced them rather than with any particular batter — though which name came first, the gem or the gem pan, is not settled — and cookbooks of the era print gems made of flour, of graham meal, of cornmeal, of rice, all baked the same way in blazing-hot cast iron. The gem pan was a commercial product, and its selling point was speed: no yeast, no rising time, hot bread on the table quickly. Attaching a city's name to a plain formula was ordinary practice in community and household cookbooks, and often signalled little more than where the contributor lived. The eggless, sugar-light formula here marks it as everyday cooking rather than company fare.