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Corn Muffins with Dates
1 cup white corn-meal 2 tablespoons brown sugar 1 teaspoons shortening 1 1/4 cups milk 1 cup flour 4 teaspoons baking-powder 1 egg 1/2 cup chopped dates Mix the corn-meal, sugar, salt and melted shortening. Scald the milk, pour it over the mixture, and let it stand until the meal swells. When cool, add the flour sifted with the baking-powder, the well-beaten egg and the dates. Beat thoroughly, and bake in greased muffin-tins in a hot oven (400 degrees-425 degrees F.).
A scalded-meal muffin from the era when corn-meal was coarse enough to need softening before it met a batter. The soaking step is the whole point of the method.
- Let the meal swellScalded milk poured over the meal and left to stand hydrates the grain so the crumb is tender rather than gritty. Give it 15 to 20 minutes, until the mixture is thick and no longer feels sandy between the fingers, and let it cool to lukewarm before the egg goes in or it will set.
- Oven400-425F as printed is correct for muffins; use the lower end for a dark or nonstick pan. Bake 18 to 22 minutes, until the tops spring back.
- White corn-mealSouthern-style white meal, generally milder in flavour than yellow, though grind varies by mill. Yellow meal works and gives a deeper colour and flavour; avoid degerminated instant polenta, which absorbs liquid differently.
- ShorteningThe original prints "1 teaspoons shortening," evidently a misprint. A teaspoon to a tablespoon of melted butter or neutral solid fat is the defensible reading of the printed amount.
- SaltSalt appears in the method but not the ingredient list. Half a teaspoon is right for this quantity of meal and flour.
- Baking-powderFour teaspoons for two cups of dry ingredients (meal plus flour) is heavy by modern standards, partly because period powders were usually single-acting and partly because the wet meal makes a dense, sluggish batter. Three teaspoons of a current double-acting powder gives plenty of lift.
- DatesChop them small and toss them with a spoonful of the sifted flour so they separate in the batter instead of sinking. If your dates are very soft and sweet, the brown sugar can be reduced for a less sweet muffin.
- YieldAbout 12 standard muffins. They are best warm; the corn-meal firms up noticeably by the second day, so reheat briefly before serving.
Scalding corn-meal with hot milk or water is a long-standing habit in American baking, carried over from mush and hasty pudding into the muffin tin, and it survived in printed recipes after commercial milling had made it less necessary. Dates were a familiar pantry item in quick breads of the period, used to sweeten and enrich plain batters. New Delineator Recipes belongs to the magazine-kitchen tradition of recipe writing for home cooks.