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Dessert

Muffins with Cocoa

A chocolate‑flavored muffin made with butter, sugar, cocoa, egg, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Warren, Pa. Presbyterian church. Second auxiliary missionary society. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 548 recipes. Both carry delta-undecalactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Muffins with Cocoa

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the yolk of the egg.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together three times.

  4. Add the mixture alternately with the milk.

  5. Beat the white of an egg to a stiff froth and fold in carefully.

Bake

  1. Fill hot greased pans half full.

  2. Bake in a quick oven for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

839Calories
21 gProtein
27 gFat
125 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Warren, Pa. Presbyterian church. Second auxiliary missionary society. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Butter + cocoatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown while creaming with butter adds air.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, and the beaten white gives lift through trapped air.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the muffins rise.
Cocoa
Provides chocolate flavour and dark colour.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Beaten egg white holds air that makes the muffins light. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter, so the muffins rise well instead of turning dense.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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