Home › The Principles of Cookery › Muffins, Toasted
Muffins, Toasted
To toast muffins slit them round the edge to the depth of an inch or more, but keep them attached in the centre while toasting. Pull open, and butter freely. Lay them on a very hot plate, and serve cut across.
A method rather than a formula, and the method is the point: an English muffin is opened partway, toasted whole, then pulled apart so the torn interior soaks the butter.
- Which muffinThese are yeast-raised English muffins baked on a griddle, not the sweet American cupcake-tin sort. Any shop-bought English muffin works, though many are now sold already split, which defeats the technique below.
- The hinge: slit, don't splitCutting only an inch or so around the rim and leaving the centre joined means the muffin toasts while still closed, which presumably helps keep the crumb from drying under the heat. Pulling it open afterwards gives a rough, craggy surface rather than a smooth knife-cut face.
- ToastingThe original gives no method; a fork held to an open fire or a grate would be the likely period one. Under a grill at high heat, two to three minutes a side is enough; a toaster will not take an unsplit muffin, so use the grill or a dry heavy pan.
- Butter freelyButter the torn faces while the muffin is still hot enough to melt it straight in. This is where the dish lives or dies, and the instruction to butter 'freely' is meant literally.
- Serve cut acrossCut the buttered muffin across into two or four pieces to serve. The recipe does not say whether it goes to table open or closed.
- A very hot plateWarm the serving plate in a low oven, or under hot water and dry it. A cold plate pulls the heat straight out of a muffin.
History: Muffins of this kind were a fixture of the English tea table through the nineteenth century, sold in the street by muffin men who carried covered trays on their heads and rang a bell — street bell-ringing by hawkers was restricted by nineteenth-century metropolitan regulation. Muffins were commonly a bought item, though period cookery books do also give recipes for making the dough; this entry confines itself to toasting and buttering. The preference for slitting and tearing rather than cutting is presented here as the book's own instruction, not as a documented general Victorian rule.