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English Common Muffins

Baked in rings on a huge griddle and carried around to customers, from the shops. Simply a common bread sponge of the cheapest, the muffins being pulled apart and toasted, almost invariably, before they are eaten. 2 pounds of flour. 1 quart of mixed water and yeast. 1 tablespoonful of salt. Mix the above together carefully, to have no lumps in it, at noon. The water should be warm and the sponge set to rise in a warm place. At about 3 beat the sponge thoroughly, and the longer the better, with spoon or paddle, and let rise again. Beat up again before using. Set tin rings the size of saucers on the griddle, half fill them with the batter, let bake light brown on the bottom, then turn them over and bake the other side. The batter should be thicker than for pancakes and thinner than fritters. The preceding being the cheapest made for sale, private parties make richer qualities with milk and a little shortening.

The Boston muffin man had a name for some kind of a hot breakfast and tea cake which the great word-catcher dictionaries have failed to rake in. The word was pyflit; his painted sign read "Muffins, Pyflits, Oatcakes, Goffers, Made Here by--." His place was a red brick, private house on Liquorpond street-of course everybody knows Liquorpond street, Boston-it leads into High street on the north and the Witham river runs at the back of the old brick stores on the further side of that, and the river itself is as lively as a street when the tide is up, although its channel to the sea is only maintained by means of bundles of wicker stuff, like the Mississippi jetties. The Muffin man used to start out punctual to the moment, morning and evening, and cry "muffins and pyflits"-and them only, so his literary customers must have known what "pyflits" meant. In that they had the advantage of these columns. In saying literary customers we only give honor where honor is due, for Boston has always been famous for literature and good hotels. The Roberts Brothers were located in Narrow Bargate, opposite the "Red Lion Inn" They used to issue a compendium with their almanac, and tried to please the Middlemarch people and "lay over" John Noble, the other bookseller, by leaving out the horse-doctoring matter and signs of Zodiac, and putting in fine pictures from the art union instead. These Roberts', striking into a new path right through the fences of old custom, were both young men. But of the hotels, the "Peacock" was the one patronized by the American travellers. (Hawthorne's England and Italy.) The "Red Lion" was frequented, principally, by "Cripps the Camer," and the "White Hart" by the farmers, and the "White Horse" by market people. Boston steeple, that most remarkable landmark, towers, an architectural glory, into the world of rooks, and crows, three hundred feet above these all. It can be seen thirty miles out at sea, and from Lincoln Minster, thirty miles the other way. But of course every Bostonian knows of the presence of this great tower, although he may never raise his eyes to look at it so common, nor care to remember old John Cot ton, the preacher. But the Boston muffin man with his mysterious pyflits, not to be found in the unabridged, was an object of more immediate interest. The people "off the Skelligs," and John Halifax, Gent, should know what pyflits are, but as for us we can only jump to the mild guess that they must have been crumpets under an ancient name.