Salt Sulphur Muffins

A rich yeast-raised breakfast bread from the Virginia springs hotels, written for a cook who already knew the rhythm of a sponge. The proportions are sound; the vagueness is in the yeast, the flour and the oven.

• The pint of yeastThis is homemade barm or a wet potato/hop yeast, mostly water with a modest population of active cells. It is not interchangeable with a pint of modern yeast. Treat it as about two cups of liquid carrying leavening: use roughly 2 teaspoons of instant yeast and make up the pint with warm water or milk, or use 2 cups of a well-fed liquid sourdough starter and expect a longer rise.
• Flour quantityNothing is given but the feel of the dough. With a pint of yeast, half a pint of water, six eggs and a pound of butter, you are looking at somewhere near 3 to 3 1/2 lb of flour to reach a dough "just stiff enough not to stick to the fingers." Add it gradually and stop at the described texture rather than a number.
• A pound of butterFour sticks. This is a brioche-class enrichment, and it wants to go in softened, after the flour is partly worked in, or the dough will never come together. Nineteenth-century butter was often salted and sometimes quite salty; the recipe names no salt of its own, so if yours is unsalted you may want to add some, perhaps 1 1/2 teaspoons.
• "Make it out in biscuit"Shape the risen dough into rounds the size of a small biscuit and set them on a baking sheet or in muffin rings. Despite the name, these are not batter muffins and not the American quick-bread muffin; the word here means a small round yeast bread.
• Oven heatNone is given. A rich egg-and-butter dough of this size bakes well at 375-400F for about 15-20 minutes, until deep gold. Any hotter and the butter and eggs colour the crust before the centre sets.
• The twelve o'clock startMixing at midday sets the first rise to run through the afternoon, with the shaped rolls getting their half hour after that; the recipe does not say at which meal they were eaten. If you want them for breakfast, mix in the evening and let the first rise go cold overnight in the refrigerator.
• The half hour is a minimum"Half an hour or more." In a modern kitchen at 68-70F, a dough this heavy with butter and egg will want an hour to an hour and a half at the second rise. Judge by the dough, not the clock.
• YieldAround three dozen small rolls, a large batch by modern standards. The recipe halves cleanly if six eggs and a pound of butter is more than you need.