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Dessert

Soft Muffins

A batter of eggs, milk, butter, salt, yeast, and flour is risen and baked into light brown muffins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Soft Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the milk and butter together, then add the salt.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light and stir them into the milk and butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the yeast, then add enough sifted flour to make a thick batter.

  4. Cover the mixture and let it rise in a warm place for about 3 hours.

Bake

  1. Once the batter is light, grease your baking iron and muffin rings.

  2. Set the rings on the iron and pour the batter into them.

  3. Bake until they are a light 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. 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Add structure and richness as they set, giving the muffins a tender, airy crumb.
Brewer's yeast or home-made yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the batter rise and become light before baking.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that holds the batter's shape and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and browns on the surface as it cooks, contributing to the crumb and colour.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas to lighten the batter. Under-proofed batter bakes dense, while the rise should be judged by how light it looks, not only by the clock.

“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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