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Breakfast Muffins
Two eggs, one cupful of milk, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, two tablespoonfuls of cornmeal, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, one and one-quarter cupfuls of flour. Bake in deep gem irons.
A plain quick-bread batter with just enough cornmeal to give the crumb some grit. The original assumes you know the drill for gem irons, so the gaps are oven heat, pan prep and how far the batter goes.
- Gem ironsCast-iron gem pans were the standard muffin tin of the period, with deep individual cups. A modern 12-cup muffin tin works; grease it well and, if using cast iron, heat it in the oven before filling so the batter sets on contact.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only to bake in deep gem irons. For a modern oven, 425F for 15 to 18 minutes, until the tops are domed and firm, suits this kind of batter.
- Mixing is the hingeBeat the eggs and milk together, then fold in the dry ingredients only until no dry flour shows. Overmixing this kind of batter develops gluten and gives you tunnels and a tough, rubbery crumb.
- No sugar and no saltThe list omits both. A half teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar would not be out of period if you want them.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to one and a quarter cups of flour is a generous but workable ratio. With modern double-acting powder a teaspoon and a half is closer to current practice, and the batter should go into the oven promptly either way.
- Cupful and tablespoonfulTreat the cupful as a standard 8 oz cup and the tablespoonful as a level modern tablespoon. That is the safer reading for a book of this kind, though "heaping" versus "level" was still unsettled and some books of the period meant heaping.
- YieldThe quantities make roughly 8 muffins in a standard tin, and fewer in deep gem cups. They are best within an hour of baking.
Muffins of this sort belong to the American quick-bread tradition that chemical leavening made possible: cream of tartar and soda first, then commercial baking powders from the 1850s onward, which let a cook put hot bread on the breakfast table without waiting on yeast. "Gem" was the name attached to the heavy cast-iron pans sold by foundries in the second half of the nineteenth century, and gem and muffin came to be used for much the same thing in American kitchens. Cornmeal had long carried a large share of American breakfast breads, and the spoonful here may be a remnant of that habit.