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 ↓
Rice 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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Make and bake
In a bowl, combine the boiled rice, sweet milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, sugar, salt, and melted butter.
Stir the mixture lightly until just combined.
Pour the batter into hot muffin pans.
Bake until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour and butter 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
- Boiled rice
- Adds body and a tender, slightly moist crumb to the muffins.
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that holds the muffins together as they bake.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking so the muffins rise and become light.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps keep the crumb moist.
- Sweet milk
- Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid base.
The step that matters
Stir the mixture lightly until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes muffins tough and dense. Stopping once the dry ingredients are moistened keeps the crumb tender and lets the baking powder lift the batter.
“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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