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PEOPLE AROUND ME AT THE AIRPORT gate are scarfing down hot, dripping breakfast sandwiches, but I’m thinking nostalgically about the blueberry muffins I baked the night before. I’m on my way to Austin to speak at the Bullock Texas State History Museum about great American cakes, and I’m wishing I had packed one of those muffins in my purse. They were loaded with fat, juicy blueberries, and some of those berries had popped open from the oven’s high heat and trickled a little river of purple juice across the pan. They were crunchy, too, from the coarse Demerara sugar I sprinkled on top just before they went into the oven. I froze most of the muffins to take to a family vacation this summer and left a couple on the kitchen counter for my husband to enjoy. Am pretty sure they’ll be gone by the time I return… Why do I forget about baking blueberry muffins? Why do I forget about writing about blueberry muffins? They’re not some great American cake I’m going to talk about in Austin, but maybe they should be.
One of my favorite blueberry muffin recipes belongs to Martha Nesbit, a longtime friend from Savannah who uses fat Georgia blueberries. I shared that recipe in my book, Baking in the American South. But for this recent bake I wanted to look beyond the South. I recalled a Boston blueberry muffin recipe being written about through the years. It came from the bakery in the old Jordan Marsh department stores, now no more. So I did a little digging through old newspapers to see if Boston Globe food editor Gail Perrin, whom I had known professionally, had shared such a recipe. And there it was, in June 1974, back when a pint of blueberries cost just 49 cents. With warmth and exuberance, Gail wrote a weekly recipe swap column for the Globe called the Confidential Chat. And that’s where these Jordan Marsh muffins surfaced. What made them different from other recipes was how 1/2 cup of the berries were smashed and folded into the batter along with 2 cups whole berries.
Jordan Marsh department stores were founded in the mid-1800s in Boston. The flagship store at 450 Washington Street would be America’s first “departmentalized” store. In addition to everything under the roof, the brownstone offered fashion shows, concerts, and art exhibits. After World War II, like many department store chains, Jordan Marsh expanded into the suburbs as the country moved in that direction, too. And then it went through the succession/bankruptcy period of over-construction and changing consumer habits. Jordan Marsh was sold to Federated Department Stores and turned into Macy’s in 1996. (There was also a Florida division of Jordan Marsh, but I don’t know if the Florida stores had bakeries or blueberry muffins.) By the time my plane landed in Austin, a New York Times recipe popped into my inbox and with insane coincidence, it was none other than the Jordan Marsh blueberry muffin. Either the NYT and Google are tracking my online searches or this was just one of those great-minds-think-alike coincidences.
Cannot Make This Stuff UpI did learn interesting backstory from the NYT email. In 2023 the newspaper heard from Mara Richmond of Burlington, Vermont, to say that her father, Arnold Gitlin, as executive food consultant for Allied Stores, had developed the Jordan Marsh blueberry muffin recipe. She said he adapted the recipe from one in the 1847 cookbook, The New England Economical Housekeeper, and Family Receipt Book, written by Esther Howland. (The book became a 19th Century regional favorite.) Since the old cookbook is now digitized, I studied it online and found no blueberry muffins mentioned. No muffins mentioned. I’m not sure where Arnold Gitlin got the inspiration, but the first print mention of blueberry muffins wasn’t until 1891 in a newspaper syndicated column by Mrs. D.A. Lincoln of the Boston Cooking School. She had authored Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book in the same year (it’s now digitized) and shared a huckleberry cake recipe that could be made into muffins. Word got out about the Jordan Marsh muffins, and people wanted to make them at home. On Sept. 13, 1966, a small advertisement ran on page 9 of The Daily Item, a community newspaper published in Lynn, Massachusetts, 10 miles north of Boston. It was submitted by an entrepreneurial someone called “The Muffin Master.” If you sent $1 in a self-addressed envelope, the Master would send you the Jordan Marsh recipe.
Regardless of the blueberry muffin’s history, the mechanics of making them are simple.In muffin making, less is more. Beat the soft butter and sugar until creamy using a hand mixer. But when it’s time to fold in the blueberries, do so lightly with a rubber spatula. Overmixing muffin batter causes the muffins to bake up tall and peaked instead of rounded. Salt lovers might go with salted butter because it balances the sugar, but you can use unsalted as well. And you can flavor the muffins with vanilla or add the zest of half a lemon. For ease in getting the batter into the pan, use a big scoop. For precise bakers, it’s about 1/3 cup batter per muffin well, or nearly to the top. One recipe makes 12 big muffins. You want a hotter oven for muffins than cake to get them to rise up quickly, so thus 375ºF. Some recipes start at 400ºF to get the oven hot and then dial it back to 375ºF once you place the pan in the oven. But whatever you do, use big paper muffin liners, the kind that are taller than the pan. It makes getting the muffins out of the pan so much easier. Do you know the Jordan Marsh muffins?
The next time I talk about American cakes, I’m including homemade blueberry muffins. They’re easy. They’re in season. They’re what you see at a bake sale, what you crave on an airplane, what you hope to find on a kitchen counter. 2026 may go down as one of the most frustrating and turbulent years as families struggle to put gas in the car, minorities feel estranged, and our president lavishly spends, sues, and spouts nonsense on social media. I don’t know how anyone can sugarcoat what’s happening as America approaches its 250th birthday. But for right now, these blueberry muffins are taking my blues away. - xo, Anne P.S. If you need a restorative moment and plan on being in Austin, Texas anytime soon, visit the LBJ Presidential Library. The welcome video of LBJ standing before Congress in 1963 accepting the role of president after JFK was assassinated is powerful. It birthed the idea that America could be “a great society” including all peoples, fighting poverty and bigotry, ushering in the Civil Rights Act and Voter’s Rights Act. Carved into granite in the foyer is an LBJ quote: “A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.”
THE RECIPE: Jordan Marsh Blueberry MuffinsAs I mentioned, you decide salted or unsalted butter. You decide vanilla or lemon zest. And you decide if these muffins are all blueberry or a mix of blueberries and raspberries for a completely America-250 look. I believe the amount of sugar is perfect, and it allows for the natural sweetness of the blueberries to come through. Makes 12 muffins Prep: 15 to 20 minutes Bake: 25 to 30 minutes
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