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Dessert

Rice Muffins

Rice muffins are baked with flour, rice, baking powder, sugar, milk, egg, butter, and salt.

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 ↓

Rice Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Sift and mix the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Beat in half of the milk, the well-beaten egg, and the remaining milk with the rice; mix thoroughly.

  3. Add the melted butter and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered muffin pans.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the muffin together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the muffins rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture and liquid base.
Cooked rice
Adds moisture and a tender texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Mix the batter thoroughly with the rice. Mixing enough to combine the ingredients evenly distributes the rice, egg, and milk through the batter. Hot rice helps it blend. Overmixing after the flour is added can develop gluten and make the muffins tough.

“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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