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Dessert

Barley and Potato Flour Muffins

Muffins made with barley flour, potato flour, milk, egg, shortening, corn syrup, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Barley and Potato Flour 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the milk, egg, shortening, and corn syrup.

  3. In another bowl, sift together the barley flour, potato flour, salt, and baking powder.

  4. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until well combined.

Bake

  1. Grease muffin molds and fill them with the batter.

  2. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until golden brown.

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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

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

  2. Barley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Barley + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley flour
Provides the main structure of the muffins, though it lacks gluten so the crumb is more tender and fragile.
Potato flour
Adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the muffins.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the structure as the muffins bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the muffins rise and become light.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and a softer crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flours and gives the batter its liquid base.

The step that matters

Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Barley flour has no gluten to build a strong network, so overmixing is less of a risk, but the batter should be combined only until smooth. Stirring too long can knock out the gas from the baking powder and make the muffins dense.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, barley, flour, egg, corn, syrup):

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, barley, flour, egg, corn, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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