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Raised Oatmeal Muffins
To three-fourths of a cup of scalded milk add one-fourth of a cup of sugar and half a teaspoon of salt. When lukewarm, add one-fourth yeast cake dissolved in one-fourth cup warm water.
Work one cup cold cooked oatmeal into two and a half cups of bread flour.
Combine the mixtures, beat thoroughly and let the batter rise over night. In the morning fill buttered gem pans two thirds full. Let it rise again and bake for twenty-five or thirty minutes in a moderate oven.
An overnight yeast-raised muffin built on leftover porridge, from the era when a pot of oatmeal was made every morning and the remainder never thrown out. Nothing here is difficult, but three things need translating: the yeast, the pan and the oven.
- A quarter of a yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of this period came in more than one size, but the small cake was around 0.6 oz, usually treated as equivalent to one modern packet of active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp). A quarter cake is therefore roughly 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. The small quantity suits a slow, cool overnight rise rather than a fast one.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350-375F. If the tops are pale at 25 minutes, give them the full 30 rather than raising the heat, since the sugar and milk will colour them quickly.
- Gem pansCast-iron gem pans are the forerunner of the modern muffin tin, though gem cups were often smaller and shallower, so a standard 12-cup tin is a close rather than an exact substitute and the yield may differ. Butter it well, as the original assumes iron, not non-stick.
- Cold cooked oatmealThis means leftover porridge, cooked stiff and thoroughly chilled, not raw rolled oats. Roughly 1 cup of firm cooked oatmeal comes from about 1/3 to 1/2 cup dry oats, depending on the type of oat and how stiffly it was cooked. Work it into the flour with your fingertips or a pastry blender until no lumps of porridge remain, or the finished muffins will have gummy pockets.
- Scalding the milkThe usual explanation is that it destroys enzymes and proteins in raw milk that slacken dough. With pasteurised milk many bakers hold the step unnecessary, so warming to lukewarm will do. Add the yeast only when the mixture is genuinely tepid, not hot.
- The overnight riseThe recipe gives no temperature, but it most likely assumes an unheated kitchen, cool by modern standards. A warm modern kitchen may over-ferment the batter and leave it sour and slack; the refrigerator is the safer overnight home, with an hour at room temperature in the morning before panning.
- Consistency and the second riseThis is a thick batter rather than a kneadable dough, closer to a spoon batter. Fill the cups two-thirds and let them rise until just level with the rims, about 45 minutes at room temperature, longer if the batter came from the refrigerator.
- YieldAbout 12 standard muffins. They are best warm from the oven; the oatmeal keeps them moist a day but they stale faster than a wheat-only muffin.
Yeast-raised muffins of this kind are essentially a small, pan-baked bread, leavened overnight, distinct from the quick chemical-leavened muffins often called gems in American kitchens of the period. The oatmeal is the telling detail. Cooked breakfast cereal was a fixture of the late nineteenth-century American table, and the growth of American rolled-oats milling made it cheap and quick to prepare. Recipes for using yesterday's porridge in bread, muffins and griddle cakes appear across the household literature of the 1890s and 1900s, part of the same economy that produced bread puddings and hash. The result is not merely thrifty: cooked oats hold water, so the crumb stays soft well past the point where a plain flour muffin has dried out.