Skip to main content
Breakfast

Corn Muffins — Southern Style

A quick oven-baked corn muffin made with flour, cornstarch, milk, eggs, butter, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Corn Muffins — Southern Style

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix together 1 cup of flour, ½ cup of Kingsford's cornstarch, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  3. In another bowl, whisk together 1 cup of milk, 2 eggs, and ¼ cup of melted butter.

  4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until just mixed.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into greased muffin tins, filling each about ¾ full.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

  3. Let cool slightly before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the muffin together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set into a tender crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter forms.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the crumb.
Kingsford's cornstarch
Softens the crumb and lightens the texture compared with flour alone.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients until just mixed. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes muffins tough and tunnelled. Stop once no dry streaks remain, leaving a few lumps.

“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.

More corn muffins recipes

Indian 3 See all 148 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes