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Muffins (Two cups milk two cups flour)
Two cups milk, two cups flour, two teaspoons cream tartar, one teaspoon soda, three eggs.
This is a proportion rather than a procedure, which is how many breakfast breads were recorded before baking powder standardized things. The ratios tell you most of what you need to know.
- The hinge: mix last, bake at onceCream of tartar and soda react as soon as they are wet, and there is no baking powder here to give a second lift in the oven. Have the pans greased and the oven hot before the dry and wet mixtures meet, then get the batter in immediately.
- Equal milk and flour means a pouring batterTwo cups of each, plus three eggs, gives something closer to popover or Yorkshire pudding consistency than to a modern spoonable muffin batter. A batter this thin suits a hot cast-iron gem pan, where it can climb the hot sides and set into a hollow, crisp-shelled roll, though the recipe itself specifies no pan.
- Gem pans"Muffins" in books of this kind often meant cast-iron gem irons or individual muffin rings, though this recipe does not say. Heat the pan in the oven, grease it, and fill the cups about two-thirds. A standard 12-cup metal muffin tin works, but the crust will be softer.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none. For a batter this thin a hot oven, around 425F, is a reasonable modern choice, since the steam has to inflate the shell before the structure sets; a slack oven would give heavy, damp muffins.
- Leavening ratioTwo teaspoons cream of tartar to one teaspoon soda is the familiar 2:1 pairing used in place of baking powder. If you want to substitute, about 4 teaspoons of baking powder is the usual equivalent for this much soda and cream of tartar.
- What the list omitsThere is no salt, no fat and no sugar. About half a teaspoon of salt is a reasonable addition, as is a tablespoon of melted butter, which improves the crumb. Sugar is optional.
- Timing and yieldExpect around 12 muffins, baked 20 to 25 minutes until well browned and firm. Serve them straight from the pan; without fat or sugar they dry out quickly.
Before commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable, cooks bought cream of tartar and soda separately and combined them in the bowl, which is what this formula does -- two parts acid to one part alkali, a ratio that appears widely in American household books of the period. "Muffin" in this context may mean not the English yeast-raised griddle muffin but a quick, egg-rich batter baked in cast-iron gem pans. Recipes written as a bare list of proportions, with no method at all, were common in books meant for cooks who already knew what to do with a batter and needed only to be reminded of the amounts.