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Flour Mixtures: Quick Breads: Muffins
RYE MEAL MUFFINS (Sample Recipe) 1/2 cup of rye meal powder 1/2 cup of wheat flour 1 egg 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar 1/3 to 1/2 cup of milk 1/2 teaspoonful of salt 2 tablespoonfuls of melted but- 2 level teaspoonfuls of baking ter Sift together, three times, all the dry ingredients. Beat the egg, add the milk and stir into the dry ingredients. Lastly, beat in the butter. Bake in six well-buttered muffin cups in a moderate oven about twenty-five minutes. Half fill the other six cups with boiling water. The egg may be omitted, or the white may be used to clarify the coffee for two or three mornings and the yolk be used in the muffins. Heat the pan before filling. CORN MEAL, ARLINGTON MEAL, OR GRAHAM FLOUR MUFFINS Prepare as Rye Meal Muffins, substituting one of the above ingredients for the rye meal. With corn meal, either white or yellow, a third of a cup of sugar is often approved.
SALLY LUNN 2 cups of pastry flour of tartar 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 1 egg with yolk or white of 3 tablespoonfuls of granulated another sugar 1/2 cup of milk 1/2 teaspoonful of soda 3 tablespoonfuls of melted but- 1 1/2 level teaspoonfuls of cream ter Sift together the dry ingredients. Add the milk to the beaten eggs and stir into the dry ingredients, stir in the butter; turn into a buttered shallow pan and let bake about twenty minutes. Cut in squares and serve hot or cold. This mixture may be baked in a muffin pan.
Two small-batch quick breads from a book built around a household of two, with the sample recipe written so the ingredient can be swapped freely. The typesetting has scrambled a few lines, so read the ingredient list carefully before starting.
- The broken linesColumn breaks have split two ingredients: the muffins call for 2 level teaspoonfuls of baking powder and 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and Sally Lunn takes 1/2 teaspoonful of soda with 1 1/2 level teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar. Soda with cream of tartar is the period equivalent of baking powder, here in a cream-of-tartar-heavy proportion; about two level teaspoonfuls of modern baking powder is the nearest substitute.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate' is usually taken to mean somewhere around 350-375F, for the muffins and for the Sally Lunn alike. Twenty-five minutes suits a standard muffin cup; the recipe gives about twenty minutes for the shallow-pan version.
- Rye meal, not rye flourRye meal is coarsely ground whole rye, closer to a fine meal than to the light rye flour sold for bread. Whole-grain (dark or pumpernickel) rye flour is the nearest supermarket match; it drinks more liquid than wheat, which may be why the milk is given as a range.
- Arlington mealA once-common finely granulated hominy or corn preparation, apparently a proprietary product, no longer sold. Fine yellow cornmeal or coarse corn flour stands in for it.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour milled with the bran and germ returned, named for Sylvester Graham. Ordinary stone-ground whole wheat is the modern equivalent.
- The half-filled cupsWater in the empty wells of a twelve-cup pan keeps the tin from scorching and steadies the heat when only six are used. With a modern non-stick or heavy pan it is unnecessary, though harmless. Preheating the buttered pan, as the recipe directs, does give a better rise and a crisper base.
- Egg economyThe suggestion to use the yolk in the muffins and save the white for clearing coffee is a period thrift measure. A yolk alone makes a slightly richer, more tender crumb; leaving the egg out entirely gives a flatter, plainer muffin.
- YieldSix muffins from the sample recipe, as written. The Sally Lunn fills roughly an 8-inch square pan and cuts into six to nine squares.
The "sample recipe" format here is deliberate: this book, aimed at small households, teaches one proportion of meal, flour, egg, milk, fat and leavening and then lets the cook rotate rye, corn, graham or Arlington meal through it, an approach generally associated with the American cooking-school tradition around the turn of the twentieth century. Rye and graham muffins belong to the same period enthusiasm for whole grains that Sylvester Graham's campaigning of the 1830s and 1840s had set in motion and that manufacturers were still capitalising on with proprietary meals like Arlington. Sally Lunn is older and less certain in origin: a rich, lightly sweetened bread known in Bath, England, from the eighteenth century, originally yeast-raised, and often said to be named for a baker of that name, though the story is traditional and unproven. What appears here is its American descendant, chemically leavened and baked in a shallow pan to be cut in squares, a shortcut that the arrival of reliable baking powder made possible.