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Crumpets
2 cups milk. 3 cups Five Roses flour 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon salt ¼ yeast cake.
Let Dissolve the yeast in warm water.
Warm the milk, beat in the salted flour, the melted butter and the yeast. this sponge stand in a warm place until light. Bake in greased muffin rings on a hot griddle, or in patty pans in the oven.
In either case, fill the pans or rings only half full, as the crumpets will rise in baking. -Mrs. James A. McIntyre, Owensville, Sask.
A contributor's recipe printed with its lines transposed and its liquid measurement missing, which is the first thing to sort out before you start.
- The scrambled textThe sentence "Let Dissolve the yeast in warm water" is a typesetting slip: the order is dissolve the yeast in warm water, warm the milk, beat in the salted flour, the melted butter and the yeast, then let this sponge stand in a warm place until light.
- The missing milkNo quantity of milk or water is given. Three cups of flour needs roughly 1½ to 2 cups of liquid for a proper crumpet batter, which should be pourable and slack rather than a kneadable dough. Add the warm milk gradually and judge by consistency.
- Yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes came in more than one size, so a quarter of a cake is only approximate: on the small cake it works out at roughly a teaspoon of fresh yeast, or something under ½ teaspoon of active dry. It is a small amount, and the sponge will want a long rise in a warm room -- likely a couple of hours -- until it is domed and bubbling.
- Muffin ringsThese are plain metal rings about 3½ inches across and an inch deep, set directly on the griddle. Egg rings or tuna tins with the ends removed do the same job. Grease both the rings and the griddle surface.
- Griddle heatThe recipe calls for a hot griddle, but crumpets generally do better at a moderate heat: too hot and the outside sets before the holes form. Expect several minutes on the first side, until the top is dry and pocked, then a short turn after the ring comes off.
- Patty pans in the ovenThe alternative method means small tart tins. The recipe gives no oven temperature or time; a moderate oven is the safest reading. The result is closer to a muffin than a true crumpet, without the open holed crumb.
- Half fullThe instruction is the hinge of the recipe. Filled more than halfway the batter climbs the ring and spills, and the centre stays raw.
- YieldRoughly a dozen crumpets from 3 cups of flour. They are usually toasted before serving.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by Lake of the Woods Milling Company as an advertisement for its flour, and its contents were solicited from Canadian housewives whose names and towns were printed alongside their recipes — here Mrs. James A. McIntyre of Owensville, Saskatchewan. That crowd-sourced origin explains both the charm and the gaps: contributors wrote as they cooked, assuming a reader who already knew how much milk a crumpet batter takes. Crumpets themselves are English, cooked on a griddle in rings rather than baked, and their characteristic holes come from a wet, well-risen yeast batter releasing gas as it sets. Their appearance in a prairie flour book is a reminder of how much of the settler kitchen repertoire in Western Canada was carried over directly from Britain.