Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓
Graham 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 dough
Combine sour milk, brown sugar, salt, and baking soda in a bowl.
Gradually add Graham flour until the mixture is moderately stiff.
If using sweet milk, add cream of tartar to the mixture.
Shape and bake
Shape the dough as desired and let it rise until doubled in size.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour 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
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that leavens the muffins.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the dough rise.
- Graham flour
- Forms the structure of the dough and gives the muffins their coarse, wholesome texture.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and moisture and helps the crust brown in the oven.
The step that matters
Add the Graham flour gradually. Adding flour slowly lets you judge when the dough reaches the moderately stiff texture. Too much flour at once makes the muffins dense and tough, because bran-rich Graham flour absorbs liquid and develops gluten unevenly.
“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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