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Dessert

Bread Muffins

Bread muffins made with bread crumbs, milk, shortening, sweetening, salt, flour, egg, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald the milk and add the bread crumbs.

  2. Allow to stand for 15 minutes.

  3. Mash and beat the mixture to a paste.

  4. Add the salt, beaten egg yolk, melted shortening, sweetening, and sifted flour with baking powder.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into gem pans until half filled.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Dry bread crumbs
Form the body of the batter, absorbing the hot milk to create a soft, tender crumb.
Egg
Adds structure and richness; the whipped white traps air that lifts the muffins.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the muffins rise in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the batter.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds its shape as it bakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg white. Stirring hard deflates the batter, so the muffins rise less and turn out denser.

“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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