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Baking

Corn Muffins

A quick batter of cornmeal, flour, baking powder, milk, egg, butter, and sugar baked into muffins.

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

six 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Add the milk, melted butter, and sugar to the egg.

  3. Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a muffin tin to make six muffins.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the muffins rise and become light.
Cornmeal
Gives the muffins their characteristic grainy texture and corn flavor.
Flour
Provides the gluten network and structure that holds the muffins together.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the dry ingredients into a batter.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.

The step that matters

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until combined. Overmixing develops too much gluten from the flour, which makes muffins tough and tunnelled. Stir only until no dry streaks remain, leaving some lumps in the batter.

“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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