Name: White of Egg Muffins
Ingredients: 8 egg whites, beaten stiff; 1 pint (2 cups) all-purpose flour; Milk, as needed to achieve a thick batter; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White of Egg Muffins

Ingredients

8 egg whites, beaten stiff
1 pint (2 cups) all-purpose flour
Milk, as needed to achieve a thick batter
¼ teaspoon salt

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

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Make the batter

Gradually add the flour to the egg whites.
Pour in enough milk to make a batter as thick as pudding.
Stir in the salt.

Bake

Spoon the batter into muffin tins 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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Egg whites: Whipped into stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the muffins as they bake.
All-purpose flour: Provides the starch and structure that sets the batter as the muffins bake.
Milk: Adds moisture and loosens the flour into a thick, pudding-like batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour. Adding flour too vigorously or stirring after the whites are whipped knocks out the air bubbles. Less air means flatter, denser muffins, so the flour should be gently incorporated.

“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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White of Egg Muffins