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Graham Muffins
1 C flour 1 t salt 1 C Graham flour 1 C milk 1 egg, well beaten 3 T melted Crisco 2 T sugar 4 t baking powder Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. Add well beaten egg, and milk. Mix well. Then add Crisco.
Mrs. Nettie Simen.
A plain church-supper muffin from the Crisco era, written in the shorthand a 1920s cook could fill in from habit. The gaps are the oven temperature, the pan and the time.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, T is tablespoon, t is teaspoon. So: 1 cup white flour, 1 cup graham flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 cup milk, 1 egg, 3 tablespoons melted shortening.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour including the bran and germ, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; ordinary whole-wheat flour works but gives a finer crumb.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, reformulated since to remove trans fats. Melted butter or a neutral oil substitutes measure for measure and improves the flavour.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives none. Bake at 400F for 18 to 22 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the tops spring back.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is high by current standards; period recipes often called for more leavening than we would now. Two and a half to three teaspoons of modern double-acting powder is plenty; the full amount can leave a metallic aftertaste.
- MixingThe instruction to add the fat last is unusual but harmless. What matters more is that the batter be stirred only until the dry flour disappears — overworking graham batter makes tough, tunnelled muffins.
- YieldEnough for about 12 standard muffins. Grease the tins well; there is no paper liner assumed here.
Graham flour carries the name of Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and temperance reformer whose 1830s campaign for coarse unbolted wheat, cold water and plain living made whole-meal bread a moral matter in American households long before it was a nutritional one. By the time recipes like this one were collected, the reforming edge had worn off and graham flour was simply what you reached for when you wanted a browner, nuttier muffin. The Crisco is the period marker: introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911 and promoted hard through recipe booklets and cookery demonstrations, it turns up by brand name throughout community cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s, where contributors wrote it the way they wrote flour or salt.