Breads/Biscuits Muffins

muffins

(from The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-cook, and Baker, edited by Eleanor Parkinson, 1844)

Ingredients:

1/4 peck flour​

3/4 pint yeast​

4 oz. salt​

water or milk​

Instructions:

Muffins are baked on a hot iron plate, and not in an oven. To a quarter of a peck of flour add three quarters of a pint of yeast, four ounces of salt, and as much water (or milk) slightly warmed, as is sufficient to form a dough of rather a soft consistency. Small portions of the dough are then put into holes, previously made in a layer of flour about two inches thick, placed on a board, and the whole is covered up in a blanket, and suffered to stand near a fire, to cause the dough to rise; when this is effected, they will each exhibit a semi-globular shape; they are then placed on a heated iron plate, and baked; when the bottoms of the muffins begin to acquire a brownish color, they are turned, and baked on the opposite side.​

Photo credit - Lupaglupa​

Note - This is not the recipe I used for the muffins shown above, which is a modern recipe.

English muffins are a really popular breakfast item in our house but recent grocery deliveries haven't included them. So, I set out to make my own (with, I have to admit, very satisfactory results). And making English muffins at home made me wonder when they were introduced to cooks in the US.

I'm old enough to remember the charming advertisements that a certain brand used to run showing a disappointed English boy lamenting that his favorite baker had gone to America and "taken his muffins with him." In fact, there was a Mr. Thomas, an Englishman who opened a bakery in New York City about 1874. But he didn't, as is often claimed, invent the English muffin. He didn't even bring it to America. References to "English" muffins, as opposed to other muffins, can be found in newspapers well before 1874. In fact, though he later trademarked the term, Thomas didn't at first call what he made an English muffin. He marketed it as a toaster crumpet.

These ads from the New York Herald in 1861 and 1862 certainly attest that the term "English muffin" was in use and well enough known that shoppers, or prospective employees, would know what it meant. But were home bakers making them? It would appear so - but they don't seem to have called them English muffins. I found many recipes for muffins and crumpets in newspapers of the era - and few were the same. While today the difference between a crumpet and an English muffin is pretty standardized, back then the terms seemed to float between recipes. Muffins were cooked on griddles, as English muffins are, or in cups. Crumpets were cooked on griddles as they are today, but from both thin batters (the modern version) or thick, risen doughs (more like today's English muffin). And recipes for what we modern Americans would call a muffin are almost always called cupcakes.

The recipe below is taken from The Complete Confectioner, pastry-cook and baker by Eleanor Parkinson (published 1846). Though this pre-dates the Civil War, it's easy to believe that the recipe book was still in use some decades later. This muffin recipe will more closely approximate a modern English muffin - though the custom now is generally to set the dough on cornmeal instead of flour.

 

[donna]

Neat. Always love English muffins. Hadn't thought of making my own. Great thread.

 

[lupaglupa]

Neat. Always love English muffins. Hadn't thought of making my own. Great thread.

Donna they were super easy and a BIG hit. I don't know why I haven't made them before, I just always assumed they would be hard to do.

 

[donna]

May have to give them a try. We made banana bread today. Always like it.

 

[JOHN42768]

Toaster crumpet!!

 

[lupaglupa]

Toaster crumpet!!

Isn't that a great term? I may have to adopt it just to confuse people.

 

[Claude Bauer]

View attachment 355772
Photo credit - Lupaglupa

English muffins are a really popular breakfast item in our house but recent grocery deliveries haven't included them. So, I set out to make my own (with, I have to admit, very satisfactory results). And making English muffins at home made me wonder when they were introduced to cooks in the US.

I'm old enough to remember the charming advertisements that a certain brand used to run showing a disappointed English boy lamenting that his favorite baker had gone to America and "taken his muffins with him." In fact, there was a Mr. Thomas, an Englishman who opened a bakery in New York City about 1874. But he didn't, as is often claimed, invent the English muffin. He didn't even bring it to America. References to "English" muffins, as opposed to other muffins, can be found in newspapers well before 1874. In fact, though he later trademarked the term, Thomas didn't at first call what he made an English muffin. He marketed it as a toaster crumpet.

View attachment 355774 View attachment 355775

These ads from the New York Herald in 1861 and 1862 certainly attest that the term "English muffin" was in use and well enough known that shoppers, or prospective employees, would know what it meant. But were home bakers making them? It would appear so - but they don't seem to have called them English muffins. I found many recipes for muffins and crumpets in newspapers of the era - and few were the same. While today the difference between a crumpet and an English muffin is pretty standardized, back then the terms seemed to float between recipes. Muffins were cooked on griddles, as English muffins are, or in cups. Crumpets were cooked on griddles as they are today, but from both thin batters (the modern version) or thick, risen doughs (more like today's English muffin). And recipes for what we modern Americans would call a muffin are almost always called cupcakes.

The recipe below is taken from The Complete Confectioner, pastry-cook and baker by Eleanor Parkinson (published 1846 and available at archive.org). Though this pre-dates the Civil War, it's easy to believe that the recipe book was still in use some decades later. This muffin recipe will more closely approximate a modern English muffin - though the custom now is generally to set the dough on cornmeal instead of flour.

Muffins. - Muffins are baked on a hot iron plate, and not in an oven. To a quarter of a peck of flour add three quarters of a pint of yeast, four ounces of salt, and as much water (or milk) slightly warmed, as is sufficient to form a dough of rather a soft consistency. Small portions of the dough are then put into holes, previously made in a layer of flour about two inches thick, placed on a board, and the whole is covered up in a blanket, and suffered to stand near a fire, to cause the dough to rise; when this is effected, they will each exhibit a semi-globular shape; they are then placed on a heated iron plate, and baked; when the bottoms of the muffins begin to acquire a brownish color, they are turned, and baked on the opposite side.

Note - This is not the recipe I used for the muffins shown above, which is a modern recipe.

Thomas' English Muffins used to be based here in Frederick, MD on English Muffin Way. I believe they sold out to another company that still maintains the site. They used to have a store there where you could get English muffins and other baked goods at bargain prices.