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Dessert

Cream Muffins

A sweet muffin made with flour, eggs, cream, and leavening agents.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Muffins

Ingredients

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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then combine them.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the center of the flour mixture.

  3. Add the thick rich cream and mix until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the batter into muffin pans.

  2. Bake until golden and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 structure that holds the muffins together as they bake.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and moisture, and help the muffins set as they bake.
Rich sweet cream
Adds moisture and fat, giving the muffins a tender, rich crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the muffins rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to produce lift and a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Mix the batter only until combined. Once flour meets liquid, gluten starts forming, so overmixing makes muffins tough. Baking soda and cream of tartar also start releasing gas as soon as they are wet, so get the pans into the oven promptly.

“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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