Home › Bread And Bread Making › Imperial Muffins
Imperial Muffins
1 cup scalded milk ¼ cup sugar ½ teaspoon salt 1¾ cups flour 1 cup corn meal ¼ cup butter 1/3 yeast cake dissolved in 1/4 cup lukewarm water Add sugar and salt to milk; when lukewarm add dissolved yeast cake, and one and one-fourth cups flour. Cover, and let rise until light, then add corn meal, remaining flour, and butter. Let rise over night; in the morning fill buttered muffin rings two-thirds full; let rise until rings are full and bake thirty minutes in hot oven.
A yeast-raised cornmeal muffin from the era before baking powder took over the muffin tin entirely. It is really a soft overnight batter bread baked in rings, so plan on starting it the afternoon before.
- The quantities as printedThe printed page gives ¼ cup sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, 1¾ cups flour, and ¼ cup butter, as our text now reads. Of the flour, 1¼ cups goes into the first sponge and the remaining ½ cup goes in later with the corn meal.
- Yeast conversionA compressed yeast cake of the period was commonly around 0.6 oz, though sizes varied; a third of one works out to roughly 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve it in the 1/4 cup of lukewarm water as directed; with instant yeast you can stir it straight into the sponge.
- Scalded milkScalding was done to kill enzymes in raw milk that weakened the dough. Pasteurised milk does not need it, but heating the milk is still the easiest way to dissolve the sugar and salt. Let it fall to about 105F before the yeast goes near it.
- Corn mealUse fine or medium yellow cornmeal, not coarse polenta grind and not self-rising cornmeal mix. The meal absorbs liquid slowly, which may help account for the long rest.
- The overnight riseAt modern room temperature a full night can overproof this dough and leave it sour and slack. Refrigerate it after the second mixing and take it out to warm for 30 to 45 minutes in the morning.
- Oven temperatureA "hot oven" here is 400 to 425F. Thirty minutes at that heat suits deep muffin rings on a sheet; in a standard modern muffin tin the cups are shallower and 18 to 22 minutes is usually enough.
- Muffin ringsThese were open metal bands set on a buttered griddle or baking sheet, giving straight sides and a flat top. English muffin rings or 3-inch ring molds work; a buttered muffin tin is the practical substitute.
- YieldAbout 10 to 12 muffins. They are best warm on the day they are baked, and they toast well the next morning.
Yeast muffins like this one belong to the older tradition in which "muffin" meant a soft, griddle- or ring-baked bread raised overnight, closer to an English muffin than to today's sweet cupcake-shaped quick bread. Cookbooks of the period often carry both kinds side by side, a good marker of the moment when chemical leavening was displacing yeast in small baked goods but had not finished the job. The cornmeal is a New England habit of long standing, and the name Imperial appears to be nothing more than a bit of Victorian bill-of-fare flourish.