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Dessert

Plain Muffins

A simple batter of egg, condensed milk, water, salt, yeast, and flour baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the beaten egg, Borden’s Condensed Milk, water, salt, and yeast.

  2. Add enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Cover and let the mixture sit overnight.

  4. Preheat a griddle on the stove overnight to ensure it's hot by morning.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into muffin rings (4 inches across) and bake quickly on the griddle.

  2. Once baked, tear the muffins open to butter them instead of cutting.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Condensed milk + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + condensed milktop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together591 recipes

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Binds the batter and adds structure as the muffins set.
Borden’s condensed milk
Adds sweetness and helps the muffins brown on the griddle.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that lightens the muffins.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the muffins their structure.

The step that matters

Bake quickly on a hot griddle. A well-heated surface sets the batter fast and browns the outside before the inside dries out. A cool griddle lets the batter spread and turn tough and dense.

“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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