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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, beat the eggs thoroughly.
Mix the batter
Add the corn meal, flour, salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, sugar, and melted butter or sour cream.
Mix in enough sweet milk to create a batter similar to pound cake.
Sift the cream of tartar and baking soda into the flour before mixing.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin and 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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
- Corn meal
- Gives the muffins their grainy texture and characteristic corn flavor.
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that holds the muffin crumb together.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that lifts the muffins.
- Cream of tartar
- Supplies the acid that reacts with the baking soda to help the muffins rise.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown as the muffins bake.
The step that matters
Sifting the cream of tartar and baking soda into the flour. Leaveners that are unevenly distributed create pockets of gas and bitter spots. Sifting spreads the baking soda and cream of tartar through the flour so the rise is even and the crumb is uniform.
“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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