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Superior Muffins
1 quart of flour. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1 tablespoonful of white sugar. Rub in one heaping tablespoonful of butter and lard mixed, and one tablespoonful of Irish potato, mashed free from lumps. Pour in three well beaten eggs and a half teacup of yeast. Make into a soft dough with warm water in winter and cold in summer. Knead well for half an hour. Set to rise where it will be milk-warm, in winter, and cool in summer. If wanted for an eight o'clock winter breakfast, make up at eight o'clock the night before. At six o'clock in the morning, make out into round balls (without kneading again), and drop into snow-ball moulds that have been well greased. Take care also to grease the hands and pass them over the tops of the muffins. Set them in a warm place for two hours and then bake. These are the best muffins I ever ate.--Mrs. S. T.
A yeast-raised breakfast bread, not a modern quick muffin: it is essentially an enriched dough given a long overnight rise, shaped, proofed again and baked. The potato is the detail worth respecting.
- The hinge: mashed potatoThat single tablespoon of smooth mashed potato helps keep the crumb tender and moist, and gives the yeast something to work on through the long overnight rise — here about ten hours from mixing to shaping. Use plain boiled potato with nothing added, and press it through a sieve so no lumps survive into the crumb.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume: a quart is 4 cups, roughly 17-18 oz of modern all-purpose, depending how it is scooped. The eggs and the half-teacup of yeast already carry a good deal of liquid, so add water sparingly and by feel, only until the dough is genuinely soft.
- Half a teacup of yeastThis means liquid yeast — homemade potato or hop barm, or brewer's barm — at maybe 1/3 to 1/2 cup, and it carried water as well as leavening. A small quantity of instant yeast, on the order of half to one teaspoon, is nearer the mark for a slow overnight rise; judge by the dough rather than the clock, and count that liquid as part of your water.
- Butter and lardOne heaping tablespoon of the two mixed is around an ounce of fat for roughly a pound of flour, so the fat is modest, though three eggs and the sugar still enrich the dough. All butter works; the lard was for tenderness and is worth keeping if you have it.
- Half an hour of kneadingHand kneading was the usual method in a domestic kitchen of the period. Eight to ten minutes in a stand mixer with the dough hook, or twelve by hand, should reach the same point — smooth, elastic, slightly tacky.
- Warm water in winter, cold in summerAn unheated kitchen ran cold overnight and a summer one stayed warm; the instruction is temperature control without a thermometer. Note that the recipe wants a milk-warm spot in winter and a cool one in summer, so pitch the rise warm or cool accordingly — here it runs about ten hours, from eight at night to six in the morning.
- Snow-ball mouldsSmall deep tinned cups, close to what a popover pan or a deep muffin tin gives you. Grease well and oil your hands before shaping, as directed, or the sticky dough will tear.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F for 20-25 minutes, until well browned and hollow-sounding — a quart of flour makes roughly 18 muffins in a standard tin.
- The second riseTwo hours after shaping is a long proof for dough that has already worked overnight. Judge by the dough, not the clock: bake when the balls have nearly doubled and spring back slowly, or the crumb will be coarse and the flavor sour.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered contributions from more than two hundred Virginia housekeepers, printed largely as they were sent in and signed with initials — hence "Mrs. S. T." and her closing verdict. The book is heavy with breakfast breads because a Southern breakfast of the period expected several hot ones at once, and yeast muffins baked in rings or moulds sat alongside batter cakes and beaten biscuit. The half-teacup of yeast points to a household keeping its own barm rather than buying it; compressed commercial yeast was only beginning to spread in American kitchens in the 1870s and 1880s, and potato — as here, both in the dough and often in the yeast itself — was the standard way of keeping a home ferment lively.