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Corn Muffins

A quick baked corn muffin made with cornmeal, sugar, salt, boiling water, butter, sweet milk, egg, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Corn 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, sugar, and salt.

  2. Pour in boiling water and mix well.

  3. Add butter, sweet milk, and the beaten egg to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the dissolved baking soda.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered gem pans.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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 + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the muffin and gives them their coarse, grainy texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps hydrate the cornmeal into a pourable batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that lifts the muffins as they bake.

The step that matters

Pour in boiling water and mix well. Boiling water fully hydrates and softens the cornmeal, which keeps the muffins from being gritty or dry. Cornmeal that is not well hydrated stays coarse and crumbly after baking.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg. 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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