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Raised Muffins
1 pint of milk scalded 1/2 yeast-cake 2 tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 1/2 cups of flour 1/4 cup warm water Scald the milk, add the butter, sugar and salt. When lukewarm, add the yeast dissolved in quarter of a cup of lukewarm water. Stir in enough flour to bake a drop batter, cover with a cloth, place it in a warm place to rise over night. In the morning, stir it, and pour into greased muffin-rings on a hot soapstone griddle, filling the rings half full of batter. Turn the muffins with a pancake turner, and bake them on both sides until a thin brown crust is formed.
This is an English muffin in all but name: a yeast batter raised overnight and cooked in rings on a griddle rather than baked. Two things in the original need sorting out before you start.
- The missing sugarThe method calls for sugar but the ingredient list omits it. A tablespoon is right for a pint of milk — enough to feed the yeast and help the crust colour without sweetening the muffin.
- The flour is a guide, not a ruleThe recipe says to stir in 'enough flour to bake a drop batter', so the cup measure is a starting point. Two and a half cups against a pint of milk and a quarter cup of water gives a slack batter, thin enough to pour into the rings as the instruction directs. Judge by texture rather than by the measure.
- Half a yeast cakeYeast cakes of the period varied in size and type; compressed fresh cakes were commonly around 0.6 oz, so half a cake is in the region of a teaspoon of modern active dry yeast. That is deliberately little — the long overnight rise does the work and develops the flavour.
- Scalding the milkBring the milk just to the point where it steams and shivers at the edge, then let it cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, as the recipe directs. Milk much above blood heat will check the yeast, and genuinely hot milk (from around 130F) will kill it.
- Muffin ringsPlain metal rings about 3.5 inches across and an inch deep, well greased. Crumpet rings or open tuna tins with the ends removed do the same job. Fill them half full; the batter climbs as it hits the heat.
- Griddle heatSoapstone was prized because it holds a steady moderate heat. On a modern griddle or heavy skillet aim for about 325-350F — hot enough to set the base in a few minutes, cool enough that the centre cooks through before the crust darkens. Six to eight minutes a side is typical.
- The overnight riseThe recipe says to set the batter in a warm place; in practice an ordinary cool room, around 65-70F, will carry it through the night, and somewhere genuinely warm risks over-fermenting it.
- Yield and servingAbout ten to twelve muffins. The recipe gives no serving direction, though muffins of this kind are commonly split and toasted.
Griddle-baked yeast batters like this predate the oven-baked American muffin and belong to the older British tradition of muffins and crumpets cooked on a hot plate. The soapstone griddle named here was a well-regarded fixture of American kitchens of the period, valued for retaining heat evenly on a wood or coal range where the fire itself was hard to regulate; the same stone was sold for foot-warmers on the same principle. The overnight rise is not a flourish but the ordinary rhythm of a household that mixed batter after supper and cooked breakfast on a fire already lit.