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Graham Muffins

A quick muffin made with Graham flour, sour milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Graham 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 ↓

Graham Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the gem pans on the stove.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg until light.

  3. Add the sour milk and sugar, and stir well.

  4. Add a pinch of salt and enough Graham flour to make a stiff batter. Mix thoroughly and add the melted butter.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and stir it in. The batter should be thick enough to drop from a spoon.

Bake

  1. Drop the batter into the well-heated and greased gem pans.

  2. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the muffins.
Graham flour
Forms the stiff batter that gives the muffins their body and texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the muffins rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into well-heated, greased pans. Batter that hits a cold or ungreased pan sticks and bakes unevenly. Heat sets the outside quickly, helping the muffins rise and release cleanly.

“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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