Home › Cereals, Batters and Doughs › Cornmeal Muffins
Cornmeal Muffins
1/2 cup cornmeal. 1 cup flour. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 3/4 cup milk. 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon melted fat teaspoon salt cup milk 1 egg Mix and sift dry ingredients; add milk gradually, egg well beaten, and melted fat; bake in hot oven 400°F. in greased muffin pans about 25 minutes.
A plain leavened cornbread batter baked in muffin pans, from the era when 400F was written out on the page rather than left to guesswork. A few of the quantities as printed are incomplete, so treat the proportions below as guidance rather than gospel.
- Missing quantitiesThe printed ingredient list gives no amount for the cornmeal or flour, and the salt and milk lines have lost their fractions. A common proportion in period muffin recipes is about 1 cup cornmeal, 1 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 cup milk with 3 teaspoons baking powder, but that is a reconstruction rather than anything the page states.
- The meal itself"Cornmeal" in a book of this vintage is more likely a fine or medium meal than the coarse stone-ground type sold today, though stone-ground meal was still in use. Coarse meal will read as gritty unless you scald it in the milk first and let it stand ten minutes.
- Melted fat"Fat" here means lard, bacon drippings or shortening; butter or a neutral oil works and is closer to modern taste. Add it last, after the egg, so it does not seize in cold milk.
- MixingStir only until the dry streaks disappear. A batter beaten smooth develops gluten and bakes into tough, tunnelled muffins.
- Oven and pans400F is correct and needs no adjustment. Grease the pans generously and heat them briefly before filling if you want the crisp browned edge these were expected to have.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes is long for standard muffin cups; 15 to 18 minutes is usually enough, and they are done when a skewer comes out clean and the tops spring back. The longer time may reflect deeper pans than modern ones.
- Yield and servingProbably about 12 muffins, though with the quantities missing this is a guess. Cornmeal muffins stale quickly and are best eaten hot from the pan with butter.
Cornmeal quick breads are the oldest continuous American baking tradition, and the muffin form is what happened to them once chemical leavening became cheap and reliable. Before commercial baking powder was widely sold in the later nineteenth century, corn batters rose on beaten eggs, sour milk and saleratus, or not at all; three teaspoons of baking powder in a single small batch, as here, marks a recipe written after the tinned product had become a kitchen staple. The recipe aims at exactly this sort of cooking: cheap grain, one egg, no technique to speak of, and a printed oven temperature for the new generation of ranges with thermostats.