muffineer

English

Etymology

From muffin +‎ -eer.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)

Noun

muffineer (plural muffineers)

1. A small jar or caster with a perforated top for sprinkling salt or sugar on muffins. [from 18th c.]
   • 1818, Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, section VIII:

     He was sitting at his table by the light of a solitary candle, with a pen in one hand, and a muffineer in the other, with which he occasionally sprinkled salt on the wick, to make it burn blue.

   • 1957, George Bernard Hughes, Small antique silverware:

     The handled spice dredger was superseded during the 1760s by the handleless caster used for cinnamon and known to collectors as the muffineer, a name brought into use for such a caster early in the nineteenth century.

   • 2009, Briann G. Greenfield, Out of the Attic: Inventing Antiques in Twentieth-century New England:

     The piece was an eighteenth-century silver muffineer, or sugar shaker.

2. (obsolete) A dish for keeping muffins hot. [19th c.]