“He was used to New York restaurants, and to quite expensive hotels, for at least once a year, on his birthday, Mr. Pilkings took him to lunch at the Waldorf. While he had apparently been devoting himself to arranging the tables his cunning old brain had determined to order tea and French pastry. Apparently the Tea Shoppe was neutral. There was no French pastry on the bill, but, instead, such curious edibles as cinnamon toast, cream cheese, walnut sandwiches, Martha Washington muffins. Nor was the tea problem so easy as it had seemed. To Father there were only two kinds of tea--the kind you got for a nickel at the Automat, and the kind that Mother privately consumed. But here he had to choose intelligently among orange pekoe, oolong, Ceylon, and English-breakfast teas.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1 pint of flour, measured before sifting. 3 scant gills of milk. 1 teaspoonful of cream of tartar. 1/2 teaspoonful of soda. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt. 1 teaspoonful of sugar. 1/2 tablespoonful of butter. 1/2 tablespoonful of lard. Mix all the dry ingredients and rub them through a sieve and into a bowl. Add the milk, and then the butter and lard, melted. Beat quickly, and put into heated and buttered iron gem-pans. Bake for fifteen minutes in a quick oven. If more convenient, two scant teaspoonfuls of baking powder may be substituted for the soda and cream of tartar. With these ingredients a dozen muffins can be made.
Sources: The passage is from Sinclair Lewis, The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Parloa, Miss Parloa's Young Housekeeper of 1893, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — slate cloth, cheese stamp.