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Eggless Muffins
2 cups flour 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons shortening Mix and sift dry ingredients, add milk and melted shortening and beat until smooth. Bake in greased muffin tins in hot oven 20 to 25 minutes.
A plain, lean muffin batter that leans entirely on chemical leavening. It works, but a few of the original's instructions run against current muffin practice.
- "Hot oven"Read this as roughly 400-425F; the book itself gives no figure. At that heat the batter gets the fast initial lift it needs from the baking powder, and 20 to 25 minutes is about right for standard tins; small tins will be done sooner.
- Beating until smoothThis is the one instruction to treat with suspicion. Modern muffin method stirs only until the flour disappears, leaving lumps, because prolonged beating develops gluten and gives tunnels and a tough crumb. With no egg to tenderise, the risk is greater here, not less.
- The baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is roughly double the common modern ratio of about one teaspoon per cup. Powders of the period were formulated differently from today's double-acting types, and the dose may also be compensating for the missing egg; with a current double-acting powder you may notice a faint metallic edge.
- SaltA full teaspoon is on the high side for two cups of flour by today's palate, particularly if you are using salted butter as the shortening. Half to three-quarters is closer to modern seasoning.
- ShorteningIn 1920s American usage this means any solid fat: lard, vegetable shortening, or butter. Note that melted fat can set into flecks on contact with cold milk.
- YieldThe original gives none. Expect 10 to 12 standard muffins, or about 8 if your tins are generous. Fill the cups two-thirds full.
- Eating windowEggless, low-fat muffins stale quickly and are noticeably dry by the next day. These are meant to come to the table straight from the tin.
The New Royal Cook Book was promotional literature put out by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and much of it is an argument for buying more baking powder. That explains both the four teaspoons here and the existence of the recipe at all: eggless, butterless and milkless formulas proliferated in American cookbooks during and just after the First World War, when eggs and fats were expensive and subject to conservation campaigns, and a baking powder manufacturer had an obvious commercial interest in showing that its product could stand in for the lift an egg would otherwise provide. Chemical leavening had been commercially available in the United States since the middle of the nineteenth century, and by the 1920s the quick muffin -- mixed, panned and baked in under an hour, with no yeast and no waiting -- was well established alongside the older raised muffin cooked on a griddle.