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Muffins (One quart sweet milk lukewarm)
One quart sweet milk lukewarm, one cup melted butter, one cup sugar, one small tea cup yeast, six or eight eggs, whites beaten separately, flour for stiff batter. This makes a large quantity.
This is a yeast-risen batter muffin from the era of muffin rings and hot griddles, not a modern baking-powder muffin. The proportions are given by feel, so expect to judge the batter rather than measure to a number.
- The hinge: batter consistency"Flour for stiff batter" means thick enough to mound on a spoon but still pourable — closer to a heavy pancake batter than a dough. With a quart of milk, a cup of butter and six to eight eggs the flour will run to many cups — the exact amount cannot be recovered from the recipe, so add it gradually and stop when the batter falls from the spoon in a slow, reluctant ribbon.
- "One small tea cup yeast"This means liquid yeast — homemade barm or a purchased wet yeast — roughly half a cup of active liquid. Substitute about 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast dissolved in a little of the warm milk. Do not use a half cup of dry yeast.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified because sour milk was the other thing likely to be in the house. Lukewarm means about 100F; genuinely hot liquid (well above 120F) will kill the yeast, and a cup of melted butter stirred in straight off the heat can push it that far.
- Rising, which the recipe omits entirelyYeast batters of this kind were often mixed at night and baked in the morning. Allow 2 to 3 hours at room temperature until visibly risen and bubbly, or refrigerate overnight and let it come back to room temperature before baking. Fold in the beaten whites at the end of the rise, not the beginning.
- Muffin rings versus muffin tinsMuffins of this type were commonly baked in greased rings on a griddle, giving a flat, crumpet-like round. The recipe gives no baking instruction; deep modern muffin cups will work but produce a taller, drier result — fill them two-thirds and try a moderate oven, checking early. On a griddle, cook covered over medium heat until set, then turn.
- Yield"A large quantity" is not an exaggeration: a quart of milk plus that much flour will give several dozen muffins, depending on the size of the ring or cup. Halving or quartering the recipe is entirely practical, and the batter does not keep well once fully risen.
- Sugar and butterA cup of each is generous for a breakfast bread and will brown quickly. Watch the bottoms, and grease rings or tins well — this batter sticks.
Batter muffins raised with liquid yeast belong to a long Anglo-American tradition that runs from the English muffin baked on a griddle or hotplate to the American "gem" and breakfast muffin of the nineteenth century. The word muffin covered both the flat griddle-baked round and the sweeter pan-baked cake for much of the 1800s, and it is the leavening rather than the shape that dates a recipe: chemical leavens — saleratus, then commercial baking powders, which appear from the 1840s u20131850s and spread unevenly thereafter — gradually pushed yeast batters out of the breakfast repertoire because they could be mixed and baked in half an hour rather than set overnight. A recipe that still calls for a teacup of yeast and eight separately beaten egg whites assumes a cook with a household-sized appetite, a reliable supply of barm, and no expectation that breakfast bread should be quick.