The Muffin Man is preserved in the Bodleian Library with lyrics very similar to those used today: <poem> Do you know the muffin man? The muffin man, the muffin man. Do you know the muffin man Who lives in Drury Lane?</poem> Victorian households had many of their fresh foods delivered, such as muffins, which were delivered door-to-door by a muffin man. The "muffin" in question was the bread product known in the United States as English muffins, not the much sweeter cupcake-shaped American variety. Drury Lane is a thoroughfare bordering Covent Garden in London. The rhyme and game appear to have spread to
Muffin muffins" by English-American baker Samuel Beth Thomas (whose baked-goods company Thomas' survives to this day). The name is first found in print in 1703, spelled "moofin"; it is of uncertain origin but possibly derived from the Low German "Muffen", the plural of "Muffe" meaning a small cake, or possibly with some connection to the Old French "moufflet" meaning soft as said of bread. This photo is a sequence showing the preparation of a flatbread muffin based on a recipe by Alton Brown in "The Muffin Man" episode of the television cooking show "Good Eats". Muffin tins and muffin pans are