It’s Wednesday evening, so naturally I am reading about the history of English muffins. The English muffin is one of my favorite genres of conversation. As we all know, it is neither a muffin nor an English (in England, they are known as “American muffins”…according to a website that’s name is “kitchen” spelled incorrectly, anyway), but a niece of the crumpet, which is a sturdy, abnormally tall, brick-like disk. And although I would never speak negatively about a bread, Uncle Crumpet is none of my concern, not only because I am not the ghost of a queen inhabiting a tower at tea time (this is the normal “crumpet eating” situation, as per my research), but also because it’s simply not my passion—English muffins is.
English muffins is my passion.
-Audrey P. Farnsworth
Since I am a history buff and part-time freelance investigative reporter, I decided to do some digging. It was time I deeply knew my passion, in and out—after all, if I’m going to be shouting out my window every fucking day how fantastic of an item the English muffin is, I better be able to back it the fuck up. I needed to know everything—including any controversies, because the last thing I need is a TikTok teen celebrity dragging my whole ass online for being problematic because English muffins are actually bad and I am wrong and therefore a liar.
It was time to do a deep dive into the English muffin lagoon of knowledge.
The engy muffy (a loving nickname I created), as I discovered through my research, has had a controversial and decorated past, with some arguing where it was even born in the first place! It is written in U.S. history that English muffins were created in the 1890s in NYC by a man whose middle name was “Bath,” but in 2018, this was called out as incorrect by the paywall aficionado known as the Los Angeles Times:
The author states that English muffins were around in England many years prior to their so-called “creation” in 1894 America, sold door to door and known by the pseudonym of…“muffin.” He goes on to proclaim that the known haunted hymn entitled “Do You Know the Muffin Man?” (which originated around 1820) proves this, as this is what the song is speaking of—but does not provide any proof of this.
Now, I’m not one to argue with this statement, despite the fact that I firmly believe that “Do You Know the Muffin Man?” is a chant created by one of Satan’s lead devils before Christ was even born, as a means to draw people into caves and suck them straight to hell through a portal. The devil did this, of course, by placing a curse within the song that both convinced anyone who heard it that THEY were, in fact, the muffin man, while also gaslighting them into thinking that they WEREN’T the muffin man by repeatedly asking them if they knew who he was.
However, the fact that there was a product called “muffin” in England long before the English muffin was “created” in America is suspect, to say the least. Given, there’s another famous product that goes by the name of “muffin”—I am, of course, talking about the muffin. But even the science lab we know as “Wikipedia” explicitly proclaims that “Do You Know The Muffin Man?” was indeed about English muffins and not muffins.
Another clue lies in the English muffin commercials of the past. Thomas’ English Muffins commercials—to this day—claim that everyone in England hated so-called English muffin creator Samuel Bath Thomas’s English muffins so goddamn much that he was forced to bring them to America. This would mean that the English muffin was created in England and not in America and also long after their appearance in the goddamn fucking song “Do You Know The Muffin Man?”
So, already, the English muffin as an item does not seem to have a definite origin story, which, for a bread, is just fucking weird, man. Why doesn’t anyone know where English muffins were actually created? How hard is this information to procure? It seems like it would just be some fact that was easily available to anyone who happened to wonder about it, but no. We live in a world where no one can actually say for certain where the fucking English muffin came from.
I paced back and forth in my study, misdirecting every negative feeling in my body straight at the culprit of not knowing where the English muffin came from. And yet despite the fact that the mystery was far from solved, no one seemed to realize this.
In 2021, one article struck the world like lightning, not only because it declared the English muffin 2021’s largest star, but also because it definitively stated that the muffin was created ~150 years prior.
The article claimed that the English muffin was “back in vogue” after being, apparently, apparently “out” (while also claiming that the english muffin is “timeless” and “seemingly never goes out of style”).
???????????????????????
How can one muffin be both? I am not here to critique anyone’s writing. Simply the fact that they are writing about the e. muff is valiant enough of a quality to make me respect the writer. I’m just honestly curious because it seems like everyone can just say whatever they want about the English muffin at any point in time and then? It’s news. It was created in both New York and London. It is a vintage bread that went out of vogue but then, in 2021, came back into it. It’s an antique, and yet, it is also bread.
Well, if this is the case, then I’m throwing my hat in the ring and labeling myself Earth’s newest English muffin reporter. You want some news? Here’s the news on English muffins in 2022:
THE ACTUAL CREATION OF THE ENGLISH MUFFIN
In the year “3,” a creature called a “clorch” (which was a prehistoric mixture of a stegosaurus and a pigeon that survived the Ice Age because it got trapped in a cave that a rock fell in front of) was eating a tree for breakfast when a bucket attached to a balloon floated down from the sky. The clorch tilted its head at the sight, and wobbled over to the bucket when it hit the ground, only to discover a round disk inside. It picked it up, with its hands, and sniffed it. It took a bite, and died. The Lord himself sighed—his recipe was still not working. He would need to go back down into his lab and start over. When was the English muffin actually created? No one knows for sure because The Actual Lord kept messing up the recipe and sending it down as a gift to his children (anything alive on earth) but it kept poisoning them. Eventually this didn’t happen, and the English muffin was created, but there’s no way of knowing exactly when.
And that’s the English muffin’s origin story.
Epilogue
For this epilogue portion, imagine me wearing a velvet smoking jacket and sitting in front of a fireplace upon a leather chair. I have just closed a big book that I just finished reading, and am startled to see you there. Nevertheless, I start saying these words to you, like I am teaching you a final lesson.
Well hello there! You want to hear some shit? Sit down, sit down, my good fuck! Look, so, okay, APPARENTLY, this year, some guy went viral on TikTok? Because—get a load of this—he alerted everyone that you are not supposed to cut an English muffin with a knife. You are supposed to use a fork. Everyone went wild. And you’re never gonna fucking believe this but, that fact is actually true! I swear to christ!
I can tell that you are getting up to walk away because the camera pans off of me, like you are walking away.
No, no, don’t go! I’M not saying you should do that. I’m just saying that technically it’s true! It’s on the package of the product, in the directions! “Pry it open with a fork,” it says. I’m with you, though, I think that’s fucking absurd. Because, riddle me this, you fork dorks (and I’m talking to THEM when I say that, not to you—you are my friend): If I’m “supposed” to use a fork to pry open my English muffin, how the hell am I supposed to put its topping on it? Hm? You want me to smear peanut butter on this thing with a fork, like a freak? Hm? Or, are you literally asking me to get ANOTHER utensil out of its bedroom, the drawer, and use that, resulting in me dirtying two fucking utensils to prepare my breakfast of one goddamn English muffin? Again, I’m not asking you this. I’m talking to them.
I notice you have appeared to go completely catatonic despite your eyes being open and staring directly at me.
Hey! Are you still listening to me? You’ve got this far away look on your face, much like the one my whole family has whenever I say even four words at them! Hello? Friend? Did you hear the thing I said before, about the fork? Here, let me start over.
Let me talk to you about English muffins
Absolutely brilliant. I didn't think I'd ever like anything better than the skeleton captaining a ship in your brain but here we are. And it was about eng muffs.
Really great. I appreciate that you, the writer, acknowledge me, the reader, as your friend. This is how it should be