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Baking

Corn Muffins

A quick batter of flour, cornmeal, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and leavening baked into muffins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Corn 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. Melt the butter.

  2. In a bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda dissolved in hot water.

  3. Add the melted butter, eggs, and enough sweet milk to create a thin batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into muffin rings.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cornmeal
Provides the coarse, gritty body and characteristic corn flavour of the muffins.
Flour
Gives the muffins structure so they hold their shape while baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to produce lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the muffins rise and brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the finished muffins.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in hot water before mixing. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed so it reacts with the cream of tartar throughout the batter. Unevenly mixed soda can leave bitter patches and uneven rising.

“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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