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Muffins, American
Warm a pint of new milk, add to a table-spoonful of fresh yeast, a pinch of salt, the whites of two eggs, frothed, and a little lump of saleratus, the size of a pea, dissolved in warm water. Put these ingredients into a bowl, and add sufficient flour to make a soft dough. Put it in a warm place to rise for two or three hours, being careful to cover the bowl with a cloth. Take out, on the end of a spoon, enough dough for one muffin at a time, drop it on a floured board, and shake it until it is the proper form. Let the muffins rise again, then place carefully on a hot plate or stove, previously oiled; when one side is slightly browned, turn on the other. When done, divide the edge of the muffin all round with the thumb and finger; toast it gently, first on one side, then on the other; tear it open, and place two or three lumps of butter between, and cut into quarters. Pile three or four on a dish, and send hot to table. Time, about twenty minutes to bake. Probable cost, about 1d. each. One will be sufficient for each person.
A yeast-raised griddle muffin, cooked on a hot plate rather than baked, in the English muffin manner. Two words in the original need translating before you start, and the finishing method is the part most cooks get wrong.
- SaleratusPotassium or sodium bicarbonate; in practice much the same as baking soda. A pea-sized lump is on the order of 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon, probably intended to take the edge off the acidity of the long-risen dough as much as to leaven it.
- New milk and the pintNew milk is fresh, unskimmed whole milk. Cassell's pint is the imperial 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups; warm it to no more than blood heat before it meets the yeast.
- Fresh yeastA tablespoon of fresh (compressed) yeast is around 1/2 oz. Substitute about 2 teaspoons active dry or 1 1/2 teaspoons instant. Modern yeast is far more vigorous, so check the dough at 90 minutes rather than trusting the full three hours.
- Flour quantityThe recipe gives none. With 2 1/2 cups of liquid expect roughly 5 to 6 cups of bread or plain flour for a soft, slack dough — softer than a bread dough, just short of a batter. Err wet; these should be loose enough to spread slightly on the board.
- The hot plateA cast-iron griddle or heavy frying pan, lightly oiled, over medium-low heat. Too hot and the outside browns before the crumb sets. The 'about twenty minutes to bake' in the original appears to cover both faces together.
- Muffin rings helpShaking the dough into shape on a floured board works, but slack dough spreads. Crumpet or muffin rings, oiled, give the straight sides and thick crumb the recipe is aiming at.
- Divide the edge, do not cutThis is the hinge of the whole thing. Working round the cooled muffin with thumb and finger tears the crumb along its natural seam, leaving the ragged interior that catches butter. A knife shears it flat and the muffin toasts to something closer to bread.
- Toast after coolingThe muffins are griddled first and toasted afterwards: two separate operations in the original. The recipe does not say whether they should cool in between.
- YieldAbout eight to ten muffins from this quantity, which at one per person is a breakfast for a household rather than a couple.
Cassell's files these under "American," and the saleratus is at least part of the reason: bicarbonate leavening was associated with American baking through the middle of the nineteenth century, when British household books still leaned almost entirely on yeast and eggs. The dish itself is the older English griddle muffin — cooked on a bakestone or hot plate, sold by the muffin man, and later marketed in the United States as the "English muffin," the bakery of Samuel Bath Thomas in New York dating from around 1880, so the label travelled in both directions. The instruction to tear rather than slice survives in the standard advice about English muffins today. The costing of a penny each places this squarely in the era when Cassell's was written for a mistress checking the cook's household accounts.