[Vwoolf] Muffins

Sun Sep 22 14:16:34 EDT 2019

My sister reminds me that our family had two toasting forks: one the 
posh telescopic one, and one that was part of a set of "fire irons": 
poker, scissor-like pincer implement to grab lumps of coal, shovel to 
deal with ashes, and a toasting fork. There was a fear that if you used 
to toasting fork in front of an electric fire then you might electrocute 
yourself. At any rate ours disappeared when my parents moved into a 
house without an open fire. The pincer implement could also be used for 
roasting chestnuts.

My reading of the "Peanuts" strip suggests that in the US marshmallows 
are toasted using a simple stick. Correct?

Sorry about "heap": "neatly stacked pile" is what I meant to write.

Jeremy

On 22.09.2019 20:01, Mary Ellen Foley wrote:
> I've got a recipe that calls for toasting the crumpets individually, 
> stacking them up, and putting "a lump of butter" on top so that it 
> melts down and butters all the crumpets. The book was given to me in 
> 1982, and was contemporary (and published by SuperCook's; British 
> readers may recognize the brand).
>
> I certainly can't imagine crumpets being eaten like American pancakes, 
> which suggests a knife and fork.  And if a stack of American pancakes 
> is a 'heap', then 'heap' is used differently in the two countries!
>
> I was disillusioned when I moved to the UK to find that a lump of 
> sugar was just a common cube of sugar, but I still like it that 
> recipes use terms such as lump. I have old recipes from my foremothers 
> that call for "a lump of butter the size of a walnut" or "of a hen's 
> egg". I wonder if any British cookbooks still calls for a knob of 
> butter?  Perhaps only if preparing spotted dick --
>
> mef
>
> On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 3:16 PM Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf 
> <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:
>
>     Rereading /The Waves/ and came across this: "Yes, I hold Gray's
>     /Elegy/ in one hand; with the other I scoop out the bottom
>     crumpet, that has absorbed all the butter and sticks to the bottom
>     of the plate." This suggests that Bernard and Neville are eating
>     crumpets as Americans eat pancakes - already toasted and buttered
>     or whatever, and piled in heaps. In contrast, my childhood memory
>     is of toasting them in front of an open fire, then buttering them
>     individually and eating them while the butter was only half
>     melted. Much nicer that way. The toasting method is as described
>     below in "Counsel's Opinion," but as the clerk is doing the
>     toasting and leaving them keeping hot in the library, presumably
>     they too will be buttered en masse and eaten from a greasy pile.
>     Do families still possess toasting forks? I suspect that with the
>     demise of the open coal fire, they exist only in Antique shops. My
>     family had a rather fine telescopic one - fully extended you could
>     toast without getting burnt by the fire.
>
>     Jeremy H
>
>
>     On 20.0.2019 10:34, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf wrote:
>>     I ‘as bin readin’ “Counsel’s Opinion”, Bella Sidney Woolf’s
>>     jointly-written privately published one-act play of 1922,
>>     presumably written for am.dram. performances of and for expats in
>>     Honkers. Can that be so?  It was printed in HK, but Bella was
>>     still in Colombo; she only moved to HK in 1925.  So, perhaps it
>>     was intended for expats in Colombo, and it is a coincidence that
>>     her husband Tom Southorn’s career took him from Colombo to HK.
>>     Anyway, the play is set in “A room in the Temple”, belonging to a
>>     “Lady Barrister”.  That’s progressive, and even more progressive
>>     is that her love interest (another barrister) finally accepts
>>     that he “was old-fashioned enough to think that men must work and
>>     women must housekeep”.
>>     However, she has a clerk, Jenkins, who is also female: “As the
>>     curtain rises, JENKINS, a quaint person in a black frock is
>>     toasting muffins in front of the fire.  She is singing ‘. . .’
>>     [censored, in case the sensitives are caused distress]”.  Jenkins
>>     and references to muffins continue throughout the play.  The
>>     muffins and the dropped aitches (e.g. “D’yer like yer muffins
>>     ‘alf-toasted or done to a coal-black cinder?”) reminds me of
>>     “Orlando”: “The muffins is keepin’ ’ot in the liberry”.
>>     As part of the US imperial project, American muffins have invaded
>>     the UK and are gradually taking over.  They are advertised as
>>     muffins, as if English muffins didn’t exist.  American muffins
>>     are the teatime equivalent of the grey [sic] squirrel.
>>     It is a sobering thought that generations of Americans have not
>>     known what muffins were in “Orlando”.  Some may have wondered why
>>     they needed to be kept ‘ot, or why one should apply butter to
>>     them (see “The Importance of Being Earnest”).
>>     The new CUP edn of “Orlando” provides info. on the history of the
>>     muffin (and the crumpet) under the quote “The muffin was invented
>>     and the crumpet”, but does not explain what a muffin actually
>>     is.  Of course, you can look up a dictionary, but sometimes you
>>     don’t know that you *need* to look up a dictionary.  Cf. “street
>>     scavengers” in “Jacob’s Room”.
>>     Stuart
>>
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