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Blueberry or Huckleberry Muffins
2 cups flour 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 3/4 cup milk 2 eggs 1 tablespoon shortening 1 cup berries Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar; add milk slowly, well-beaten eggs and melted shortening; mix well and add berries, which have been carefully picked over and floured. Grease muffin tins; drop one spoonful into each. Bake about 30 minutes in moderate oven.
A plain muffin batter from the Royal Baking Powder promotional books, stiff enough to hold fruit in suspension. A few of its numbers want adjusting for a modern oven and modern tins.
- Oven"Moderate oven" in these books means about 350-375F. Muffins do better at the top of that range: 375F gives a faster rise and a browner crown.
- TimingThirty minutes likely reflects the deeper pans of the period. In standard 2 1/2-inch tins, expect 20-25 minutes; the muffins are done when the centres spring back and a tester comes out clean of batter.
- SaltA full teaspoon of salt for 2 cups of flour reads high today, particularly against only a tablespoon of sugar. Half a teaspoon is closer to modern taste, and no harm comes of it.
- ShorteningOne tablespoon is a very lean muffin by current standards, and they will stale quickly. Melted butter works in its place; 3-4 tablespoons gives a tenderer crumb if you want one, though the batter will be looser.
- MixingThe instruction to "mix well" runs against later advice on quick breads. Stir only until the flour disappears, lumps and all. Overworked muffin batter bakes into tunnels and a rubbery crumb.
- Flouring the berriesA light dusting of flour on dry berries is the traditional way to stop them sinking, and it is said to limit juice streaking the batter. Frozen berries should be tossed in flour while still frozen and folded in at the last moment.
- YieldRoughly 10-12 standard muffins. "One spoonful into each" assumes small tins; fill modern cups about two-thirds.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and like many such booklets it exists to sell the tin named in every ingredient list. That commercial purpose may also help explain why the recipes are so plain: they had to work reliably in an unfamiliar kitchen with an unfamiliar leavener. Blueberries and huckleberries are treated here as interchangeable, which reflects American usage more than botany. Huckleberries belong to the genus Gaylussacia and have larger, grittier seeds, while true blueberries are Vaccinium, but both were commonly gathered wild rather than bought, and cookbooks of the period often seem to have paired the names. The instruction to pick the berries over carefully is a reminder of that: fruit arriving from a hillside rather than a carton came with stems, leaves and the occasional green one.