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Rice Muffins
Put one quart of flour into a basin, mix in one teaspoonful each of salt and bicarbonate of soda, and two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar; then add two tablespoonfuls of sifted crushed loaf-sugar, and pass the whole through a fine wire sieve into a basin. Stir in by degrees two eggs beaten up in one breakfast cupful of milk, and work well until the paste is light and smooth. Then add two breakfast cupfuls of cold boiled rice. Turn the preparation into well-buttered tins, place them in the oven and bake. When done, take them out, and serve them either hot or cold.
A thrifty leftover-rice batter leavened with hand-mixed baking powder. The original gives no oven temperature, no time and no yield, so those are the gaps to fill.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume in this kitchen: a quart is 4 cups, roughly 1 lb (about 450-480 g) of all-purpose. Sift it with the salt, soda and cream of tartar as directed, which is the only mixing of the leavening you get.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon bicarbonate plus two teaspoons cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, roughly equivalent to 3 to 4 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. Unlike commercial powder it fires once, on contact with the liquid, so get the tins into the oven promptly.
- Loaf-sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone, broken and crushed for use. Two tablespoons of ordinary granulated sugar is the same thing; no need to sift it separately if your flour is going through the sieve anyway.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, generally taken as 8 to 10 fl oz. Use 1 cup of milk for the eggs and 2 cups of cooked rice, and expect a stiff batter; add milk a spoonful at a time if it will not drop from the spoon.
- Cold boiled ricePlain white long-grain, boiled and thoroughly cooled, is what is meant. Cold rice separates into grains and folds in without turning the batter to paste; warm rice will smear. Refrigerate cooked rice rather than leaving it out overnight.
- The ovenNo temperature is given because ranges had none. Bake at 400-425F. Muffin tins want a hot oven so the leavening lifts before the crust sets.
- Tins and time"Tins" here means gem or muffin pans, buttered heavily since there is little fat in the batter. Figure 20 to 25 minutes, until well risen and browned at the edges.
- YieldPerhaps 18 or so standard muffins, depending on tin size. They are lean and lightly sweetened, closer to a bread than a modern cake-style muffin; the recipe offers them either hot or cold.
Rice breads, waffles and muffins run right through nineteenth-century American cookery, and most of them exist for the same reason: a pot of rice boiled at one meal turned into something else at the next. Rice batter cakes are often associated with Charleston and Savannah tables, and with the Carolina and Georgia rice trade, though the route by which they travelled north is not documented. The leavening here dates the recipe as much as the rice does. If the collection is, as generally held, the one Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, put his name to in the 1890s, packaged baking powder was by then widely sold, yet this recipe still calls for soda and cream of tartar combined by hand.