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Flour Mixtures (Add melted butter Fill well)
4. Add melted butter. 5. Fill well greased muffin pans about two-thirds full and bake about twenty minutes in a moderate oven.
Graham Muffins. 1 C. Graham flour 1 C. white flour 4 t. baking powder t. salt 4 T. sugar 1 C. (?) milk 1 egg 1 T. melted butter Mix by the batter method of mixing.
Rice Muffins. 2 C. flour C. cooked rice 4 t. baking powder 1 C. (?) milk t. salt 1 egg 2 T. melted butter 2 T. sugar 1. Mix and sift dry materials. 2. Add well beaten egg to one-half the milk and stir into the dry materials. 3. Add the rice and enough more milk to make a soft drop batter. 4. Add the melted butter and bake in well greased muffin pans in moderate oven from twenty to twenty-five minutes. Corn Cake. 1 C. cornmeal 14 C. flour 5 t. baking powder 1 t. salt 4 T. sugar 1 C. (?) milk 1 egg 1 T. melted butter 1. Mix by the batter method of mixing. 2. Bake in a well greased shallow pan, in a hot oven for twenty minutes.
Note. If the corn cake is baked in a deep bread pan, use a moderate oven and bake from thirty-five to forty minutes.
A page from a school domestic-science manual, printed with the fractions half lost. Several quantities survive only as "t. salt" or "1 C. (?) milk," so read them as a family of related batters rather than as exact formulas.
- The missing fractionsWhere the text reads "t. salt" the original almost certainly said ½ teaspoon, and "C. cooked rice" was most likely ½ cup. The milk in each recipe is printed as "1 C. (?)"; something in the range of 1 to 1¼ cups will work, but the figure is lost. "14 C. flour" in the corn cake is probably a mangled 1¼ cups. These are reconstructions, not certainties.
- Batter method of mixingThe method the page keeps referring to: sift the dry ingredients together, beat the egg and combine it with the milk, stir the liquid into the dry just until moistened, then fold in the melted butter last. Stopping while the batter is still lumpy is what keeps muffins tender.
- Oven temperaturesA moderate oven is roughly 350–375°F; the hot oven called for in the thin corn cake would be somewhere around 400–450°F. The note about a deep bread pan is consistent with the rest of the page: the same batter in a loaf pan wants a moderate oven, 35 to 40 minutes.
- Graham flourGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat, named for Sylvester Graham. Ordinary stone-ground whole wheat flour is the closest substitute; it absorbs more liquid than white flour, so expect to use the upper end of the milk range.
- Baking powder quantitiesFour to five teaspoons per two-plus cups of flour is heavy by current standards. Modern double-acting powder at 1 to 1½ teaspoons per cup of flour gives comparable lift and avoids the metallic aftertaste that comes with an excess.
- The rice muffinsUse cold, fully cooked long-grain or medium-grain rice, and break up any clumps before folding it in. The page adds the rice after the liquid, along with enough extra milk to make a soft drop batter.
- Pan sizes and yieldThe page specifies only "well greased muffin pans" filled two-thirds full, and a "shallow pan" for the corn cake. A batter on this scale will fill roughly a standard 12-cup tin, or fewer larger cups; an 8-inch square or 9-inch round pan is a reasonable choice for the corn cake.
- Greasing"Well greased" is emphasized because these batters have very little fat and will stick. Butter or oil the tin thoroughly, or use paper liners; a nonstick pan still benefits from a light coat.
This page reads like a lesson plan: one master technique — the batter method — taught once and then applied across a set of named recipes, so a student learned a principle rather than several unrelated ones. The choices of grain reflect what a home pantry actually held. Graham flour carried the reforming enthusiasm of Sylvester Graham's whole-meal advocacy from the 1830s onward; the rice muffins are a thrift lesson in using up yesterday's cooked rice; and corn cake, in one form or another, had been standard American baking since long before chemical leavening replaced eggs and beaten batters.