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Sweet Spring Muffins
Sift three good pints of flour. Beat well six eggs, leaving out one and a half of the whites. Then beat into them as much flour as they will take in; then add milk and flour alternately (beating all the while) till all the flour is used. Add five tablespoonfuls of yeast, and when this batter is well beaten, stir into it two ounces of melted butter, cooled but liquid. The batter must be as stiff as can be beaten with an iron spoon. Bake in a hot oven.--Mrs. L.
A yeast-raised batter bread from a period when "muffin" meant something risen with barm and baked in rings, not a quick bread leavened with baking powder. The recipe assumes you know that, and it leaves out the two things a modern cook most wants: the amount of milk and the rising time.
- The hinge: this is a yeast batter, so it must riseNothing in the text says to let it stand. Beaten batters of this kind were generally set aside until light and puffed, an hour or two at room temperature, or overnight in a cool room, then baked. Bake it straight away and you are likely to get heavy, eggy slabs.
- Three pints of flourFlour was measured by volume, so three pints is about 6 cups, roughly 26-28 oz of modern all-purpose. "Good pints" means generously filled, not levelled.
- Milk is unmeasured on purposeThe quantity is governed by the phrase "as stiff as can be beaten with an iron spoon" -- a thick, sticky drop batter, not a pourable one. With 6 cups of flour and 6 eggs expect somewhere around 2 to 2 1/2 cups of milk, added gradually until the batter just holds its shape on the spoon.
- Five tablespoonfuls of yeastThis is liquid homemade yeast or brewer's barm, far weaker and wetter than anything sold today. Substitute one standard packet of dry yeast, about 2 1/4 teaspoons, and account for the lost liquid in the milk.
- The egg whites"Leaving out one and a half of the whites" means discard the whites of one and a half eggs and use all six yolks -- a common trick for richness without toughening. Half a white is awkward: beat one white lightly and hold back about half of it, or simply omit two whites.
- Two ounces of butter, cooledThat is 4 tablespoons. "Cooled but liquid" matters because hot butter will kill the yeast and start to set the eggs.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; something in the region of 400-425F is the usual modern reading. Greased muffin rings or a heavy muffin tin, warmed first, help the batter set against hot metal; figure roughly 15 to 20 minutes, until well browned.
- YieldThis is a large household batch -- roughly two to three dozen muffins depending on ring size. Halve it comfortably.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, is a collected book: nearly every receipt carries the initial or name of the Virginia housekeeper who contributed it, as this one does with "Mrs. L." The form is one often described for a Southern breakfast muffin of this era: a yeast batter, beaten hard, left to rise, and baked in iron rings, closer kin to an English muffin or a crumpet than to the baking-powder muffin that displaced it once chemical leavens became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth century.