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Dessert

Soda Muffins

Soda muffins made with sour milk, baking soda, eggs, butter, and flour, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Soda Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then combine them.

  3. Add the butter to the flour and stir in the sour milk gradually.

  4. As the butter mixes in, add the eggs and continue stirring until you have a thick, light batter.

  5. Adjust the milk if necessary; the batter should not be too thin.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into muffin tins and bake until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter and adds tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the muffins rise.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter bind and lighten.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the muffins bake.

The step that matters

Combining the sour milk with the baking soda and flour. Baking soda needs an acid to react, so the sour milk must be stirred in gradually and the batter baked promptly to keep the gas that makes the muffins rise. Overmixing can toughen the batter and knock out air.

“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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