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Rice Muffins

Rice muffins are baked with milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cold cooked rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, beaten eggs, salt, and sugar.

  2. Sift in flour and baking powder, then mix thoroughly.

  3. Fold in the cold cooked rice.

  4. Beat the mixture vigorously for 5 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin and bake until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the muffins together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Cold cooked rice
Adds body and a tender, chewy texture to the muffins.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture vigorously for 5 minutes. Vigorous beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives the muffins strength and chew. Baking powder begins releasing gas as soon as it gets wet, so the batter should go into the tin and the oven promptly to keep the rise.

“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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