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Wheaten Gems
Mix one tea-spoon baking powder and a little salt into one pint flour; add to the beaten yolks of two eggs one tea-cup sweet milk or cream, a piece of butter (melted) half the size of an egg, the flour with baking-powder and salt mixed, and the well-beaten whites of the two eggs. Beat well, bake immediately in gem-pans in a hot oven, and take out and send to the table immediately. -Mrs. Gib Hillock, New Castle, Ind.
A light egg batter baked in cast-iron gem pans, closer to a popover than a modern muffin. Everything depends on heat: the pans and oven must be fully hot before the batter goes in.
- Gem pansHeavy cast-iron pans of shallow oval or round cups, the ancestor of the muffin tin. Grease them and heat them in the oven until the fat shimmers, then fill and return at once; a cold pan gives a pale, heavy gem. A standard muffin tin works but will not give the same crust.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures, ovens being judged by hand; a modern equivalent is usually taken as around 425-450F. These rise on steam and beaten egg white as much as on chemical leavening, so the initial blast of heat is what lifts them.
- A pint of flourTwo cups by volume, roughly 8 to 9 oz depending on how it is scooped. Nineteenth-century flour was often softer and less consistent than modern all-purpose; a soft or pastry flour is nearer the mark.
- One tea-cupBuckeye Cookery's teacup is smaller than a modern cup, generally taken as about 3/4 cup, though the books are not consistent. Start at 3/4 cup milk and add a little more if the batter is stiffer than a thick pouring cream.
- Butter half the size of an eggAbout 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons, melted and cooled slightly so it does not cook the yolks.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified to distinguish it from the buttermilk and sour milk used with saleratus in other recipes of the period. Whole milk or cream both work.
- The leavening is light on purposeOne teaspoon of baking powder to two cups of flour is less than modern practice. The whites carry much of the rise, so fold them in last and stop as soon as they are incorporated rather than beating the batter down.
- Timing and yieldFifteen to twenty minutes, until well domed and browned. Makes about a dozen. The instruction to send them to the table immediately is not politeness; they collapse and toughen as they cool.
Gems were a fixture of American breakfast tables from the 1870s onward, and the name is as much associated with the pan as with the batter: heavy cast-iron gem pans, sold by stove and hardware foundries, were heated empty so the batter set on contact and puffed. Recipes ranged from plain graham gems made with nothing but coarse flour and water, favored by health reformers of the Graham school, to rich wheaten versions like this one with eggs, cream and butter. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, first published in 1877, was assembled from contributions by Midwestern housewives, and the attribution to Mrs. Gib Hillock of New Castle, Indiana is typical of how the book was built: hundreds of named cooks, each vouching for a household formula.