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Bread

Raised Muffins

Muffins leavened with a yeast cake, made from scalded milk, bread flour, sugar, salt, and butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Raised Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and shortening to the milk.

  3. Soften the yeast cake in 1 tablespoon of lukewarm water.

  4. When the milk mixture is lukewarm, add the softened yeast and flour. Beat well.

  5. Cover and set in a warm place to rise.

Shape and bake

  1. When light, add the well-beaten egg.

  2. Pour into well-greased muffin pans.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C).

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 + breadtop 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. Milk + breadtop 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. Milk + flourtop 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

Bread flour
Provides gluten network that traps gas and gives the muffins their structure.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its proteins help give a tender crumb.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until light. Yeast needs a warm, sufficiently long rise to produce enough gas for a light texture. Rising too short leaves dense muffins, while over-proofing lets the gluten network weaken so the muffins collapse or turn coarse.

“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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