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Rye Muffins
Sift together 3 cupfuls of rye flour, 1 cupful of corn-meal, 1 teaspoonful each of salt and sugar and 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. In 1 cupful of boiling water melt 1 scant tablespoonful of butter, add to it 3 cupfuls of cold milk and stir into the dry mixture. Last add 4 well-beaten eggs, beat hard and fill greased muffin tins twothirds full. Bake half an hour in a hot oven.
A thin, egg-rich batter closer to a popover than a modern muffin — expect a moist, custardy crumb rather than a domed cakey one. The proportions are unusual and worth reading twice before you start.
- Hot oven"Hot" in this period is usually taken as roughly 400-450F. At that heat the eggs set and puff quickly, which is what carries these; a moderate oven will give you dense, damp muffins.
- The batter is meant to be looseFour cups of dry ingredients to four cups of liquid produces a pourable batter. Do not thicken it. The lift comes mostly from the four beaten eggs and steam, with only 2 teaspoons of baking powder as support.
- Rye flourUse medium or light rye; dark or whole rye absorbs more liquid and gives a heavier crumb. Rye develops very little gluten structure, so the instruction to "beat hard" will not toughen the batter the way it would with wheat.
- Fill and bakeTwo-thirds full is right for a batter this thin; it climbs. Half an hour is accurate at high heat — pull them when the tops are firm and deeply browned, not pale.
- YieldAbout 20 to 24 standard muffins. The recipe fills two full tins, so have both greased and ready before the eggs go in.
- EatingBest within an hour of baking. Rye and cornmeal muffins go leaden as they cool; reheat rather than serve cold.
Rye and cornmeal were the cheap flours of the American kitchen long before wheat became universally affordable, and their pairing goes back to the colonial "rye and Injun" bread of New England, where rye grew where wheat would not and maize filled out the loaf. By the time economy cookbooks like this one were compiled, that combination had shifted from necessity to habit and thrift: rye cost less than white flour, and a batter stretched with four cups of milk and a scant tablespoon of butter fed a table generously for very little. The heavy reliance on eggs for lift, with only a token spoonful or two of baking powder, is characteristic of recipes written when chemical leaveners were still comparatively expensive and cooks trusted a well-beaten egg further than a tin of powder.