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Muffins (Cake compressed yeast cup)
1 cake compressed yeast 1/4 cup lukewarm water 3 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup hot milk 1 cup rolled oats 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup sifted white flour Boil the oats and butter in a cup of milk one minute. Let stand until lukewarm. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in one fourth cup of lukewarm water, and combine the two mixtures. Add flour and salt and beat well. The batter should be thick enough to drop heavily from the spoon. Cover and let rise until light, about one hour, in a moderately warm place. Fill well-greased muffin pans two thirds full; let rise about forty minutes; bake twenty-five minutes in a moderately hot oven.
A yeast-raised oat batter muffin, closer to a small batter bread than to the quick muffins that share the name. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the measurements belong to another era.
- The yeast cakeA cake of compressed yeast in this period was commonly about 0.6 oz, though sizes varied. Substitute one 1/4-oz packet of active dry yeast, or about 2 1/4 teaspoons, dissolved in the quarter cup of lukewarm water as written.
- Oven temperature"Moderately hot" means 375-400F. At the lower end the crumb sets more gently, which suits the oat batter.
- Milk quantityThe list calls for 1 cup hot milk and the method says to boil the oats and butter in "a cup of milk" -- these are the same cup, not two.
- The one-minute boilThat minute is enough to soften the rolled oats and melt the butter, no more. Longer and the oats break down into porridge and the muffins turn gummy.
- Cool before combiningWait until the oat mixture is genuinely lukewarm, under about 110F, before adding the yeast. Hot milk will kill it outright, and this batter has no chemical leavening to fall back on.
- Batter consistency"Thick enough to drop heavily from the spoon" is the real gauge. Whole wheat flours vary in absorption, so adjust with a spoonful more flour or milk rather than trusting the cup measures exactly.
- Two risingsThe hour in the bowl and the forty minutes in the tins are both needed. The panned batter should look visibly domed and slack before it goes into the oven.
- YieldThe recipe does not say; probably somewhere in the region of eight to twelve standard muffins. Best warm the day they are baked.
Mrs. Fryer's book belongs to a wave of early twentieth-century loose-leaf cookbooks, sold as ring binders so a housekeeper could add, remove and reorder pages -- which is also how recipes like this one end up under the wrong divider. The recipe itself sits at the meeting point of two food fashions of the era: the domestic-science enthusiasm for whole grains, rolled oats and whole wheat flour as "health" foods, and the older tradition of yeast-raised muffins and batter breads that predates the rise of baking powder. Compressed yeast, sold in small cakes from around the 1870s onward, is what made a one-hour rise practical for a weekday breakfast; before it, a cook would have relied on a sourdough-style leaven or homemade hop yeast and planned the night before. The oats boiled briefly in milk are a scald in miniature, gelatinising the starch so it holds moisture -- the same principle behind the tangzhong method now popular in soft breads.