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Dessert

Sally Lunn Muffins

A sweet, fluffy muffin made with milk, butter, eggs, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

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

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 ↓

Sally Lunn Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the egg yolks, sugar, and butter together until light.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

Fold and bake

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

  2. Add the baking powder and stir thoroughly.

  3. Bake immediately in muffin tins.

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.

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.

  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. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air that lightens the batter and helps the muffins rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the muffins to rise and become light.
Butter
Creamed with sugar and yolks, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture, and emulsifying fat to the batter.

The step that matters

Bake immediately in muffin tins. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it meets liquid, so the batter should go into the tins and the oven right after mixing to keep its rise.

“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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