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Oatmeal Raisin Muffins (with yeast)
(Makes 3 to 4 dozen-will keep) 1 compressed yeast cake 1 pint milk 1 cup rolled oats 1/4 cup Mazola 1/2 cup Karo 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups bread flour 2 cups entire wheat flour 1 cup raisins Scald the milk and pour it over the oats, Mazola, salt and Karo. When tepid, add the yeast dissolved in one-fourth cup lukewarm water. Beat in the flour and raisins and let rise until double in size. Half fill muffins pans oiled with Mazola. Let rise and when nearly double, bake from thirty-five to forty minutes in a moderate oven, 350 to 375 degrees F. The raisins may be omitted, or chopped figs, dates or nuts may be substituted.
A yeast-raised muffin rather than a baking-powder one, so it behaves like a soft enriched bread dough baked in muffin cups. The brand names are the main obstacle for a modern reader.
- Compressed yeast cakeOne cake was roughly 0.6 oz of fresh yeast; substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, dissolved in the quarter cup of lukewarm water as directed. Fresh cake yeast is still sold in some markets but has a short refrigerated life.
- Mazola and KaroMazola is corn oil, and any neutral oil works. Karo was sold in more than one grade; light corn syrup is the likely intention here. Corn syrup contributes to keeping quality and browning as well as sweetness, and honey or golden syrup will change the flavor but not the structure.
- Entire wheat flourAn older term for whole wheat flour, ground from the entire kernel. Pair it with bread flour as written, since the whole wheat alone will not carry the rise.
- Scalding the milkWith pasteurized milk the old reason for scalding no longer applies, but keep the step: the near-boiling milk is what softens the oats and melts the salt and syrup together. Wait until the mixture is genuinely tepid, under about 110F, before adding yeast.
- Rising timesThe recipe gives none. Expect roughly 1 to 1 1/2 hours for the first rise in a warm room, and 30 to 45 minutes in the pans for the second.
- Oven and donenessThe original helpfully names its own moderate oven, 350 to 375F. Thirty-five to forty minutes suits deep old muffin cups; in a standard modern 12-cup tin start checking at 22 to 25 minutes, or when the center reads about 190F.
- YieldThree to four dozen implies small pans filled halfway. From a standard tin expect closer to 24 muffins; the batch is large, and corn syrup will help keep them soft, which is presumably what the headnote's 'will keep' refers to.
The brand names point to a promotional cookery booklet of the sort issued by American corn products firms in the early twentieth century, and it reads like one: Mazola oil and Karo syrup are named in the ingredient list rather than "oil" and "syrup," and the oiling of the pans is specified by brand as well. Both products came out of the corn refining industry that expanded after 1900, and their makers issued cookbooks to encourage cooks to use corn oil in place of butter and lard and corn syrup in place of sugar. Such substitution had extra force during the First World War, when wheat, sugar and butter were all subject to conservation campaigns, though nothing here dates the recipe to those years, and the half-and-half of white and whole wheat flour and the cup of rolled oats need not be explained by them. The yeast rather than baking powder is the older habit: raised muffins and oat breads long predate the quick-bread muffin that now owns the name.