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Dessert

Break Kast Muffins

A muffin made with eggs, sugar, butter, baking soda, milk, flour, and cream of tartar.

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

Break Kast Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the beaten eggs and sugar until combined.

  3. Add the butter and mix until smooth.

  4. Stir in the baking soda, milk, flour, and cream of tartar until well combined.

  5. Pour the batter into muffin rings or greased tin plates.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the muffins their structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release carbon dioxide, which makes the muffins rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides the acid that reacts with baking soda to create lift in the batter.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda, milk, flour, and cream of tartar until well combined.. Once flour is wet and stirred, gluten starts to form, so mixing too long makes muffins tough. Baking soda and cream of tartar also begin releasing gas as soon as they meet liquid, so the batter should go into the oven without delay.

“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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