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Dessert

A Simple and Delicious Muffin

A muffin made with butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

A Simple and Delicious Muffin

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the egg and sweet milk, and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then gradually add to the wet mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a well-buttered pie pan.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with butter for breakfast or lunch.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the crumb feel tender and moist.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as the proteins set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the muffin as its starches set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise and become light.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Sweet milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the batter moist.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sifted flour and baking powder. Mixing flour into a wet batter develops gluten, so overmixing makes the muffin tough. Adding the dry ingredients gradually and stopping once they are just combined keeps the texture tender.

“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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