A word from Carmen about the Muffins

This recipe was presented as a delicious and war conscious snack, for the duration of its time in the oven, there were wafts of sugar and honey. To add to the moistening of our taste buds the muffins looked absolutely enormous. However as this particular venture drew to a close and we came to taste the muffins... To our horror our mouths repelled the far too predominant taste of baking powder. What had we done wrong? How could a food, presenting itself as delicious to every other sense, be so harsh to the taste bud?

As you can see the instructions for the baking process are laid out clearly, the language, simple and to-the-point. This leaves the list of ingredients and potential differences in measurement sizes as the recipe is translated from a 1918 cook book to the modern day kitchen.

We presumed that ‘butter substitute’ stood for margarine... specifically to us I can’t believe it’s not butter. Paul Clark from ‘The marketing of Margarine’ provides the answer as he reveals that ‘between 1900 and 1920 oleomargarine was produced from a combination of animal fats and hardened and unhardened vegetable oils’. This provides a stark contrast to the ingredients of modern day margarine but rather a combination of vegetable oils, buttermilk and man-made ingredients. Another noticeable feature of measurement sizes, the use of ‘cup’ and ‘teaspoon’ throughout the recipe, indicates the average cup/teaspoon size of the time, however this does not necessarily match up to cup sizes of today and hence ingredient amounts may differ in correspondence. In the case of our muffins, this lead to a rather over matched amount of baking powder which although heartily adding to muffin size, rather took from the taste.

Now for the title. As you can see the title creates a reference to the men on the front line, ‘over the top’ was a common phrase used by the men, as they had to breach the top of their trench in order to run across the no-man’s land and bring the front line forward. This particular cook book sees the return of many such phrases such as ''loved boy plum pudding', 'blighty salad' and 'french peasant's soup' in a bid to create a closer link between the civilians and soldiers on the front line. By using these colloquialisms, the book steers their usage away from their more brutal connotations.