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Health Muffins
4 cups bran 1 cup raisins put through food chopper 1 cup rolled oats put through food chopper 1½ cups bread flour 2 tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 5 teaspoons baking powder 2 teaspoons salt 1 cup Karo 1/4 cup Mazola 1 egg 2 cups milk Combine the ingredients as enumerated. Beat well, transfer to muffin pans oiled with Mazola, and bake twenty-five to thirty minutes in a moderate oven, 350 to 375 degrees F. This will make eighteen medium sized muffins. They will keep several days, and may be served split, toasted and buttered.
A very wet, very sweet bran batter from a Corn Products Refining Company booklet — every branded item in the list is one of theirs. It works, but the proportions need translating.
- Bran means plain wheat branNot bran cereal and not All-Bran. Use unprocessed miller's bran from the baking aisle; 4 cups is roughly 8 oz by weight and it will drink up the liquid.
- Karo is corn syrupOne cup is the entire sweetener here — there is no sugar in the recipe. Light Karo gives a mild muffin, dark gives a molasses-ish note. Corn syrup browns readily, which may be one reason the oven is kept moderate, though the booklet does not say so.
- Mazola is corn oilAny neutral vegetable oil substitutes directly. A quarter cup for eighteen muffins is lean by modern standards, and the result will be dense rather than tender.
- Bread flour, not all-purposeIn this period 'bread flour' meant the stronger hard-wheat flour as distinct from pastry flour. All-purpose works, but the crumb will be softer and more crumbly.
- Skip the food chopperThe reason for grinding the raisins and oats is not given. Chop the raisins roughly by hand and pulse the oats a few times in a food processor, or leave the oats whole for more chew.
- Let the batter restBran benefits from ten to fifteen minutes to hydrate before baking. The original says 'beat well'; by modern practice you may prefer to mix only until combined and then let it stand.
- Oven and time350–375°F is given outright. Twenty-five to thirty minutes suits medium cups filled nearly full; eighteen muffins will need more than one standard twelve-cup tin. Check at twenty-two.
- SaltTwo teaspoons for eighteen muffins reads high today. One teaspoon of fine salt is closer to modern palates, particularly if you are using salted butter to serve them.
- Yield and keepingEighteen medium muffins, as stated. The corn syrup keeps them moist for several days at room temperature in a tin, and the suggestion to split, toast and butter them is the best way to use day-three muffins.
This comes from a promotional cookbook published by the Corn Products Refining Company, maker of Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch, Karo syrup and Mazola oil — which explains why a simple bran muffin manages to name four of the firm's products in one ingredient list. Such booklets were a common form of advertising in the first decades of the twentieth century, promoting corn syrup and corn oil for uses in which a household would previously have reached for sugar, molasses, butter or lard. The word "Health" in the title reflects the bran enthusiasm of the same era, when coarse wheat bran was widely promoted for regularity and roughage; the muffin also contains a full cup of syrup.