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Corn-Meal Muffins
One cup wheat flour, one cup corn meal, one cup milk, one-half cup of sugar, one-third cup butter, one egg, one-half teaspoon salt, two teaspoons of baking powder.
— Mrs. J. I. Woodruff
A compact village formula that lists ingredients and trusts the cook to know the rest. Nothing here is obsolete, but the recipe omits mixing method, pan, temperature and time.
- No oven temperature is givenMuffins of this proportion bake at 400-425F. Twenty minutes in a standard 12-cup tin, or 18 if the cups are shallow; the tops should spring back and a skewer come out clean.
- Method the recipe assumesNone is given. The butter and sugar may be creamed, the egg beaten in, then dry ingredients and milk added alternately; melted butter stirred into the liquids would also have been usual. Stir only until the flour disappears — overworked cornmeal batter bakes tough and tunnelled.
- Butter measureOne-third cup is a hair over 5 tablespoons, about 75 g.
- Corn meal grindNineteenth-century household cornmeal was closer to a medium stone grind than modern degerminated fine meal. Medium yellow cornmeal gives the texture intended; fine meal makes a smoother, cakier muffin.
- Baking powder strengthTwo teaspoons to two cups of dry ingredients works out to about one teaspoon per cup, which is within modern norms. Period powders were commonly single-acting and could lose potency once the tin was opened.
- SugarHalf a cup makes these distinctly sweet — nearer a teacake than a supper bread. Cut to a quarter cup if they are to go with soup or ham.
- Pan preparation and yieldGrease the tin well; the batter has enough sugar to stick. Expect 10 to 12 muffins, best eaten within a few hours of baking.
Cornmeal muffins sit at the meeting point of two American baking traditions: the older cornbreads leavened with eggs and soda, and the newer wheat-and-baking-powder quick breads that spread through household cookery after commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth century. Recipes like this one, credited to a named contributor, give the ingredients in order and no instructions, on the assumption that anyone likely to read it already knew how muffins were mixed and what her own stove did.