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Oatmeal Muffins
½ cup sugar 1 tablespoon butter 2 eggs 2 cups buttermilk 1 teaspoon soda (dissolved in milk) 1 teaspoon (small) salt 2 handfuls (good) oatmeal Five Roses flour to make stiff batter.
Drop from spoon in greased pan, and bake in moderate oven.
A contributor's recipe of the loose, measure-by-hand sort common in the Five Roses collection: the flour quantity is left to the cook's judgment and the oats are counted in handfuls. It works, but you have to make two decisions the original leaves open.
- The hinge: batter consistencyEverything depends on "stiff batter" — thick enough to drop from a spoon in a lump that holds its shape, not to pour. Add flour a half cup at a time and stop as soon as the spoon leaves a ridge; overshooting gives dry, heavy muffins.
- Two handfuls of oatmealRoughly a cup of oats, though a handful is genuinely imprecise. Rolled oats are the safe reading; "oatmeal" at this date could mean either rolled or cut oats, so if you use Scotch or steel-cut, let it stand in the buttermilk 20-30 minutes first or it will stay gritty.
- Flour quantityNot stated. Expect somewhere around 2 to 2½ cups of all-purpose flour with 2 cups of buttermilk and a cup of oats. Five Roses was milled from hard spring wheat and sold as an all-purpose flour; a modern all-purpose flour is the closest substitute.
- Soda and buttermilkOne teaspoon of soda is the full leavening — there is no baking powder here. Dissolving it in the buttermilk as directed distributes it evenly, but it also starts the reaction immediately, so mix and get the pan into the oven without delay.
- Moderate ovenRead as roughly 350-375°F; the hotter end suits muffins, since the soda lifts them fast. Figure 20 to 25 minutes, until springy and browned.
- The pan"Greased pan" is unspecified; a cast-iron gem pan or a muffin tin is the likely intention. Dropped free-form onto a flat baking sheet they will spread, so use cups.
- YieldA large batch; expect around 18 standard muffins. Best warm — buttermilk-and-soda muffins with oats go dense by the next day.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal to promote its Five Roses brand flour, and much of its contents came from Canadian housewives who sent in their own recipes — which is why measurements like "2 handfuls (good) oatmeal" and "flour to make stiff batter" survive uncorrected. Oatmeal in quick breads was ordinary in Scottish-descended households across Ontario and the Maritimes, where oats were cheap, local and eaten daily; adding a handful to a muffin batter stretched the wheat flour and gave the crumb some chew. The buttermilk-and-soda leavening points to a kitchen where sour milk from butter-making was a constant by-product rather than something bought, and where baking powder, though widely available by this date, had not displaced the older method for everyday baking.