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Corn Muffins
One quart sifted Indian meal, a heaping tea-spoon butter, one quart milk, a salt-spoon salt, a third cup yeast, a table-spoon of molasses; let it rise four or five hours, and bake in muffin-rings.- Mrs. G. W. Marchant, Buffalo, N. Y.
A yeast-raised batter bread from the days when "muffin" meant something cooked in a ring on a griddle rather than a paper cup. The quantities are generous and the leavening is the part that needs translating.
- Indian mealThis is plain cornmeal. Meal of this period was stone-ground, coarser and more absorbent than modern degerminated yellow meal; a medium or fine stone-ground meal gives the closest texture.
- The measuresA quart is 4 cups, so this is equal volumes of meal and milk — a pourable batter, not a dough. A salt-spoon is about a quarter teaspoon, which is very lightly salted by current taste.
- The yeast"A third cup yeast" means liquid homemade or brewer's yeast, a wet ferment nothing like a modern packet. Roughly a teaspoon of active dry yeast, slaked in a little of the warm milk, stands in for it; the long rise is what the original relies on.
- Straight cornmeal will not rise muchWith no wheat flour there is no gluten to hold gas, so four or five hours of fermentation buys flavour and a little lift, not a domed crumb. Expect something dense, moist and slightly sour rather than fluffy.
- Muffin ringsMetal rings set on a greased griddle or in a shallow pan, filled about two-thirds and cooked until set, then turned or finished in the oven. English muffin rings or straight-sided crumpet rings do the same job; a standard muffin tin also works.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature. If baking rather than griddling, a hot oven in the region of 400 to 425F sets the outside quickly and keeps the batter from spreading flat; allow 20 to 25 minutes.
- The molassesA single tablespoon in this quantity of batter is barely a trace; it will do more to feed the yeast and colour the crust than to sweeten. Do not increase it thinking of modern sweet cornbread.
- YieldTwo quarts of batter fills roughly 20 to 24 standard muffin rings. Halving the recipe is sensible for a household of two or three; these are best the day they are made.
The Dixie Cook-Book, like many late nineteenth-century American compilations, was built from contributed recipes signed with the name and town of the woman who sent them in — here Mrs. G. W. Marchant of Buffalo, a reminder that these "Southern" collections drew on Northern kitchens as well. The term Indian meal for cornmeal dates to the colonial period, distinguishing the native grain from English "corn," which meant grain in general; it survived in American cookbooks well into the twentieth century before fading. Chemical leavening was widely available by the 1880s, yet breakfast breads set with a wet yeast still appear in books of this period, and this one asks for a rise of four or five hours. Muffin rings are associated with griddle cookery as much as with the oven, though the recipe here says "bake"; like most recipes of its date, it gives no temperature at all.