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Pecan Muffins
1/3 cup butter 1/4 cup sugar 1 egg 3/4 cup milk 2 cups sifted flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 cup pecan meats broken up Mix as for cake. Stir in nutmeats last. Pour batter into hot greased muffin pan and bake in moderate oven (375 degrees) for 20 to 25 minutes.
A straightforward creamed-butter muffin from the era when "mix as for cake" was assumed knowledge. A few points on that instruction and on the leavening.
- "Mix as for cake"Cream the softened butter with the sugar until light, beat in the egg, then add the sifted flour and baking powder alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour. This is the creaming method, not the modern muffin method of dumping wet into dry, and it gives a finer, cakier crumb.
- Don't overwork itEven with the creaming method, stop mixing the moment the last flour disappears. Continued beating develops gluten and produces tunnels and peaked, tough tops.
- OvenThe recipe helpfully supplies its own number: 375F. Preheat fully, and preheat the greased pan as directed — batter hitting a hot tin gets a faster initial rise.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is heavy by current standards; 2 to 3 teaspoons is the usual modern ratio. Baking powder can also lose potency sitting in the tin. With fresh double-acting powder, 3 teaspoons will do, and will avoid the faintly metallic aftertaste that too much can leave.
- No salt listedThe ingredient list omits it. Salted butter may well have been assumed, though the recipe does not say so. If your butter is unsalted, add 1/2 teaspoon salt to the flour.
- PecansBroken by hand into rough pieces rather than chopped fine, and stirred in last as the recipe directs. Toasting them first sharpens the flavor considerably.
- YieldAbout 12 standard muffins, or 9 if your tin is generous. Fill cups two-thirds full and bake the full 20 to 25 minutes — a skewer in the center should come out clean.
- ServingBest within an hour of baking. Muffins this lightly sweetened tend to stale quickly; if made ahead, warm briefly before serving.
Pecan muffins belong to the American quick-bread tradition that expanded after chemical leavening became reliable and cheap in the second half of the nineteenth century -- baking powder let a cook produce something bread-like in half an hour without yeast or a sponge set overnight. The pecan is among the few commercially important nuts native to North America, concentrated in the Mississippi valley and Texas, and by the 1920s and 30s shelled pecans were increasingly available by mail and in grocery stores, which may be part of why they turn up so freely in cakes, cookies and muffins of this period.