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Dessert

Bread Muffins

A quick muffin made from soaked broken bread, milk, eggs, butter, salt, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the bread

  1. Soak the broken bread in milk for 30 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Add melted butter, beaten egg yolks, salt, and flour.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites and baking powder.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into small pans, then bake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure, while whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, making the muffins rise and turn light and airy.
Flour
Provides starch and gluten that set during baking to give the muffins their body.
Broken bread
Soaked in milk, it absorbs liquid and adds moisture and a tender crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the bread and flour, adding moisture and helping the batter set.
Melted butter
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and gives a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites and baking powder. Folding gently keeps the whipped egg whites and the gas from baking powder trapped in the batter. Vigorous stirring knocks out that air, so the muffins rise less and turn denser.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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