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Dessert

Another Muffin Recipe

A simple muffin made with sugar, milk, flour, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and egg.

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

Another Muffin Recipe

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Add the milk and the egg without beating, then add the melted butter.

  3. Mix briskly for one to two minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into warm muffin cups and bake until golden.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the muffin's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to produce lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that makes the muffins rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the finished muffin.
Sugar
Sweetens the muffins and helps them brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Mix briskly for one to two minutes. Mixing develops gluten in flour, which toughens the crumb. Brief mixing, after the wet and dry ingredients are combined without overbeating, keeps the muffins tender while the acid and baking soda still produce lift.

“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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