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Muffins
Pour into a basin one breakfast cupful of milk that has been boiled, and mix in two tablespoonfuls of sugar, the yolk and white of an egg, one teaspoonful of salt, and one half teacupful of yeast, adding sufficient flour to make a light batter. Place the basin in front of the fire in order that the batter may rise, leave it there for about six hours, then put in one and one-half teaspoonfuls of warmed butter, and thoroughly mix together. Have in readiness some muffin-rings, fill them two-thirds full of the batter, let them rise again for a quarter of an hour, then bake them in a hot oven until done. They may also be baked in muffin rings on a griddle, in which case the melted butter must be added at the beginning, and the rings and griddle well greased. Take up a spoonful of the batter without allowing any of the air bubbles to escape, fill up the rings, and when the muffins are cooked, browned, and have well risen, turn the muffin with the ring and brown on the opposite side. They should be pulled apart, and not cut when required for use. Muffins, French Style Dissolve a medium-sized cake of yeast in warm water, put one ounce of butter into a saucepan with one-half pint of milk, and warm; beat four eggs until they are frothy, then stir them in with the milk. Mix the yeast with the eggs and milk, and stir in gradually one quart of flour. Butter or lard some muffin rings, and set them on a greased baking-dish, pour some of the batter into each, and set them in a warm place to rise. When well risen, bake the muffins lightly in a moderate oven. If they are to be served hot with butter inside them, they should be pulled asunder, as cutting them with a knife will make them heavy.
Two yeast-raised batters for what an American cook today would call English muffins: cooked in rings, either in the oven or on a griddle, and torn rather than sliced. Neither is the modern baking-powder cup muffin.
- The cupsA breakfast cupful is a generous cup, roughly 8 to 10 fl oz; a teacupful is smaller, about 6 oz. For the milk, treat it as 1 cup. Boiling and cooling the milk was a scalding step for raw milk and does nothing for pasteurised milk today, but let it cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes near it.
- Half a teacupful of yeastThis is liquid barm or brewer's yeast, sold wet and used by volume. There is no exact conversion; about 2 1/4 teaspoons of instant or active dry yeast will raise this quantity of batter, though the flavour will be cleaner and less sour than the original. The "medium-sized cake of yeast" in the French version is a cake of compressed fresh yeast; cake sizes varied at the time, but a modern 0.6 oz cake, roughly equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons dry, is a reasonable stand-in.
- Oven numbersA hot oven is around 425 to 450F; the moderate oven of the French version around 350F. Muffin rings on a heavy greased baking sheet work at either temperature, with the hotter oven giving the better rise.
- Griddle temperatureFor the griddle method, hold the pan at a steady medium-low, around 300 to 325F. Higher and the outside sets before the crumb is cooked through; these are thick and want 6 to 8 minutes a side.
- Do not stir the risen batterThe instruction to lift a spoonful "without allowing any of the air bubbles to escape" is given for the griddle method and matters a great deal. The open, holey crumb comes largely from those gas cells, so scoop gently and do not beat the batter down after the long rise.
- Six hours in front of the fireThat was a warm hearth, not a modern room. At 70F the first rise will take 2 to 4 hours with commercial yeast; go by the batter, which should be bubbly, domed and smelling faintly winey. An overnight rise in the refrigerator also works and improves the flavour.
- Muffin ringsPlain metal rings about 3 1/2 inches across and 3/4 inch deep. Egg rings or tuna tins with both ends removed do the same job. Fill two-thirds full, as directed, and grease the rings well or the batter will climb and stick.
- Flour quantitiesThe first recipe gives no flour measure at all: add enough to make a thick pourable batter, the consistency of heavy pancake batter, which will be roughly 2 cups. The French version's quart of flour is about 16 oz and produces a much stiffer batter than the milk and eggs suggest; add it gradually and stop when it drops thickly from the spoon.
- Yield and servingThe first recipe fills roughly six to eight rings; the French one, with four eggs and a quart of flour, is nearer a dozen. Pull them apart with the fingers while warm, as instructed, and butter the torn faces; the book's stated reason is that a knife makes them heavy.
Oscar Tschirky was the ma tre d'h tel of the Waldorf, not a chef, but the 1896 volume he put his name to catalogued the hotel's kitchen output at exhaustive length, including the plain breakfast breads a large hotel had to turn out by the hundred. Muffins of this kind are the English sort: a wet yeast batter cooked in rings, either on the range top or in the oven, ancestors of what American supermarkets now sell as English muffins. The origin of the name is uncertain: it has been linked to the French pain mouflet, a soft bread, though a Low German derivation has also been proposed, and the trade of the muffin man selling them door to door in London survived into the nineteenth century. The distinction that matters in this period is that a muffin was yeast-raised and cooked in a ring while a crumpet batter was thinner and holier; the American chemically leavened cup muffin was still a separate, newer thing.