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Rice Muffins
Take one cup cold boiled rice, one pint of flour, two eggs, one quart of milk, one tablespoon of butter, and one teaspoonful of salt; beat very hard and bake quickly.
A late-Victorian batter muffin, closer to a popover or a Southern batter bread than to the sweet cake we now call a muffin. Two things need attention before you start: the liquid ratio and the missing leavening.
- The batter is very thinA quart of milk to a pint of flour gives something close to crepe batter, which will not hold in a standard muffin tin. Either treat it as written and bake it in deep, well-greased iron gem pans or ramekins set on a sheet, or reduce the milk to about 2 cups for a pourable but clinging batter.
- "A pint of flour"Flour was measured by volume, not weight: a pint is 2 cups, roughly 250 g of all-purpose. Scoop and level rather than packing.
- No leavening is givenThe rise comes entirely from steam and beaten egg, which is why the instruction says to beat very hard and bake quickly. If you want a lighter, more familiar crumb, 2 teaspoons of baking powder folded in at the end is consistent with other muffin recipes of the same period.
- "Bake quickly"The recipe asks for speed rather than naming an oven; period equivalents for a quick oven are usually given loosely as somewhere in the region of 400-450F. The high heat is what sets the shell before the steam escapes; a slower oven risks soggy, flat results.
- The riceCold boiled rice means plain long- or medium-grain rice cooked in water, well drained and thoroughly chilled, ideally left over from the day before. Break up the clumps with your fingers or a fork before adding, or you will get dense lumps through the crumb.
- Preheat the pansGrease the tins and put them in the oven while it heats, then pour the batter into hot metal. This is the usual handling for thin egg batters of the popover type, and it helps give a hollow, crisp muffin rather than a flabby one.
- Yield and servingAs written the batter fills about 18 to 24 standard muffin cups. Serve hot from the pan with butter; they collapse and toughen as they cool and do not reheat well.
Rice muffins belong to a large family of nineteenth-century American batter breads that stretched a modest amount of wheat flour with cooked rice, hominy, cornmeal or leftover potato. Rice was cheap and plentiful in the United States after the growth of the Carolina and Gulf Coast crops, and cookbooks from Charleston northward are full of rice breads, rice waffles and rice griddle cakes. Their appearance here reflects the frugal logic of the period kitchen: yesterday's pot of rice becomes today's hot bread, and a single pint of flour feeds a full table. The reliance on hard beating rather than baking powder may suggest a recipe with roots earlier than the book itself, from the years when chemical leavening was still new and cooks trusted eggs and a hot oven instead.