Egg Muffins
3 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup milk 2 eggs 3 tablespoons melted butter Mix and sift the dry ingredients. Add beaten yolks, butter and milk. Beat well; cut and fold in the stiffly beaten whites. Turn into gem pans; bake in hot oven ten to fifteen minutes. Three tablespoons sugar may be added if desired.
A plain popover-adjacent muffin lightened with beaten egg whites rather than extra leavening. The printed ingredient list is incomplete, so read the notes before you start.
- The flour is missingThe list gives baking powder, milk, eggs and butter but no flour or salt, even though the method says to sift the dry ingredients. Comparable muffin formulas of the period pair 3 teaspoons baking powder with about 2 cups of flour and 1/2 teaspoon salt, but the original does not state it and the amount is a reconstruction, not a reading.
- Gem pansGem pans are heavy cast-iron muffin pans, usually with rounded or oval cups. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works; if you have cast iron, heat it in the oven and grease it just before filling for a crisper crust.
- Hot ovenThe recipe gives no figure; period cookbooks generally place a 'hot oven' somewhere in the 400-450F range. At that heat ten to fifteen minutes suits standard-size cups, and larger cups will need longer.
- Folding the whitesThis is the hinge. The whites are the only lift beyond the baking powder, so cut and fold them in with a spatula until just combined and get the pans into the oven immediately. Beating them into the batter collapses the foam and gives a dense, tough muffin.
- Butter temperatureMelted butter added to cold milk and eggs will seize into flecks. Let it cool to warm, or temper it with a spoonful of the milk before combining.
- The sugarThree tablespoons is barely sweet by modern standards; without it these are a plain bread muffin meant for butter and preserves at breakfast or tea.
- YieldAbout 12 standard muffins on the reconstructed quantities above; the original gives no yield. Like most quick breads they are best soon after baking.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907), written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, is one of a large family of American manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks, and it carries a full general kitchen section alongside the chocolate recipes that justified its existence. Egg muffins belong to the chemically leavened quick-bread tradition that grew as reliable canned baking powder became widely available in the later nineteenth century; the additional step of folding in beaten whites may reflect the older practice of relying on egg foam for lift, and here it functions as a refinement rather than a necessity. Gem irons were a standard piece of kitchen equipment in this period, and the word gem persisted in American cookbooks alongside the newer term muffin tin.