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Muffins of Corn-meal and Flour

A quick muffin made from cornmeal mush, flour, yeast, butter, sweet milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Muffins of Corn-meal and Flour

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the cornmeal mush, butter, flour, salt, sweet milk, and yeast.

  2. Mold the mixture into a ball and let it rise in a warm place for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Once risen, roll the dough out very thin and cut it into 5-inch rounds.

  4. Let the rounds rise for 20 to 30 minutes, some on the griddle and some on the board.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the muffins slowly on the griddle until golden brown.

  2. When baked, tear them open, butter, stack them, and cut through the center.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Yeast
Produces gas that leavens the dough, giving the muffins their rise and airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure to hold its shape and rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries richness and flavour.
Cornmeal mush
Adds moisture and corn flavour, and softens the texture of the dough.
Sweet milk
Supplies liquid to hydrate the flour and yeast and add mild sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Baking slowly on the griddle. Yeast-risen rounds need gentle, moderate heat so the centre cooks through before the outside browns too deeply. Rushing the heat can leave a raw, doughy middle and scorched exterior.

“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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