page_title: Muffin
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Muffin / Flatbread muffin / History
caption_attribution_description: Muffin man, illustrated in Punch
context_page_description: A muffin is an individual-sized, baked product. It can refer to two distinct items, a part-raised flatbread that is baked and then cooked on a griddle and a cupcake-like quickbread that is chemically leavened and then baked in a mold. While quickbread muffins are often sweetened, there are savory varieties made with ingredients such as corn and cheese. The flatbread is of British or European derivation, and dates from at least the early 18th century, while the quickbread originated in North America during the 19th century. Both are common worldwide today.
context_section_description: English muffins were first mentioned in literature in the early 18th century, although the product is undoubtedly older than that. In the Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson states that "[t]here has always been some confusion between muffins, crumpets, and pikelets, both in recipes and in name."  The increasing popularity of flatbread muffins in the 19th century, is attested by the existence of "...muffin men [who] traversed the town streets at teatime, ringing their bells" to sell them. The bell-ringing of muffin men became so common that by the 1840s, the British Parliament passed a law to prohibit bell ringing by muffin men, but it was not adhered to by sellers. 
  "Mush muffins (called slipperdowns in New England) were a Colonial [American] muffin made with hominy on a hanging griddle."   Theses and other types of flatbread muffins were known to American settlers, but they declined in popularity with the advent of the quickbread muffin. The English muffin was re-introduced to the American market in 1880 as "English muffins" by English-American baker Samuel Beth Thomas (whose baked-goods company Thomas survives to this day). Thomas called the product "toaster crumpets", and intended them as a "more elegant alternative to toast' to be served in fine hotels. The English muffin has been described as a variant form of a crumpet, or a "cousin", with the difference being the location of the holes; in a crumpet, the holes go all the way to the top, whereas with an English muffin, the holes are inside. In 1910, Fred Wolferman of Kansas City, Missouri began making denser English muffins at his family grocery , using empty tin cans as molds.
caption: A Victorian-era muffin man using a bell to alert patrons that he is nearby.
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