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Corn Meal Muffins

A quick oven-baked muffin made with cornmeal, sour milk, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Corn Meal 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 your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift together the cornmeal and flour.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sour milk, and baking soda.

  2. Combine the wet mixture with the sifted cornmeal and flour.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Grease muffin rings or griddles and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Sour milk
Provides liquid and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding, while whipped whites add airy structure.
Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the muffins and gives them their coarse, grainy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the muffins rise.
Flour
Adds gluten-forming structure that helps hold the muffins together.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that gives lift. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, so the muffins stay light instead of deflating.

“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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