They’re not anything like muffins. “English Biscuits” would make more sense.
What American’s call English muffins are what English people call muffins. They are what the children’s song “The Muffin Man” is about, for instance. How the other cup-cake-type things that Americans call muffins got to be called that, I have no idea, but I would suggest that that is what you should really be asking about.
To an English person they are most certainly not any type of biscuit.
Because this is an English biscuit.
English muffins are what you would traditionally get if you asked for a muffin in England. However, the American idea of cake-disguised-as-bread-so-I-can-eat-it-for-breakfast has made significant inroads, from what I’ve heard.
A muffin isn’t cake - a cupcake is cake.
Yeah, it’s about 50/50 in England now, and generally needs to be discerned from context - i.e. any reference to muffins being toasted, buttered, or spread with Marmite or jam indicates it’s the bread-type muffin (indeed, if someone says they had muffins for breakfast, I’ll assume they’re talking about muffins, not cakes).
If someone says they’re bringing muffins to share at the office, or they mention any sweet ingredient (such as chocolate chips, toffee, blueberries, etc), I’ll assume they mean the cake-type muffin.
But neither one is commonly called anything more than a ‘muffin’ here. And (as others have said), neither is anything like anything we call a biscuit.
I was reading only the other day that the English muffin was invented in New York and not eaten in England until the 1990s.
http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/breadstuffs/english-muffin-history.asp
the 1990s claim in that article is bullshit.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know what an English Muffin was. We certainly had them in Australia when I was a child. That means '70’s at the latest. I find it difficult if not impossible to believe that English muffins were available in Australia in the 70’s but not in England till the 90’s. I think that story be bollocks.
'cept they were just called muffins of course
That is absolute nonsense. For one thing, I have heard the term “English muffin” used in an American TV show from before the 1990s. Specifically, in an episode of Hart to Hart (which ceased it run in 1984). Robert Wagner’s character, visiting London, complains about the quality of “English muffins” in England, clearly and rightly implying both that they are available in England, and that the term “English muffin” was then commonplace in America. (I think he was right, incidentally. The ones you get in America tend to be better than the ones in England, these days, anyway, possibly due to the relatively recent British mania for reducing salt levels in everything until it tastes like shit.)
But anyway, there were muffins, “English” muffins", in England when I was a kid in the 1950s and '60s, and the “Muffin Man” song, which is clearly set in England (“He lives down Drury Lane,” a well known London street) probably goes back to the 19th century at least. (Indeed, my guess is that if you had asked the Pilgrim Fathers or other early British settles in America for a muffin, they would have given you an [English] muffin.) What are a relatively recent innovation in Britain are the cakey things Americans call “muffins”. They have almost certainly been introduced to Britain from America, and may, for all I know, be an American invention. I would like to know how they got to be called muffins in America. That is the mystery here.
Definitely had Eggs Benedict in the UK in the 90s, in a not-at-all-hip B’nB in Bath. That claim is, as said, bullshit.
In Elizabeth David’s book “English Bread and Yeast Cookery” she cites a recipe for muffins from 1747 and says “although both muffins and crumpets must be of considerably earlier origin, recipes for them do not appear to have reached the published cookery books much before the eighteenth century.”
The Muffin Man rhyme is recorded in 1820. It would be really strange for English people to be singing about something that was to be invented decades later.
As pointed out before … biscuits are “cookies” and scones are “biscuits” in the UK; these, and American muffins (cake), are reliant on chemical raising agents - only available from 1860 onwards.
Albert Steptoe, born on 26 September 1899, was an illegitimate offspring of a muffin man who delivered muffins on a flat tray balanced on the head who died in 1910.
I should provide the original source of the 1747 recipe for muffins: Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 4th edn, 1754 (first published 1747.
Also from Elizabeth David’s book (it is an oddly interesting read given the topic!).
The Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery, ed. Theodore Francis Garrett 1899: “It has been claimed for the British Baker that he alone can make a muffin; but it is almost feared, if this were ever so that the prestige has passed over to America, where muffins are made of various flours, and so light and digestible that it is a question if they are not rather an American dish”
I think Americans should give the name “muffin” back to the English. “Cake” is a perfectly good word for those sugary things.
I suggest:
“Muffin” = English Muffin
“Supersized cupcake” = American Muffin
However, I don’t doubt that in New York in 1894, a British immigrant named Samuel Bath Thomas claimed to invent the English Muffin
After all, they’re delicious. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d probably claim to invent them too.
And rose to number 3 on the charts that year thanks in large part to Casey Kasem.