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Dessert

Soft Muffins

Soft muffins made with eggs, milk, butter, salt, yeast, and sifted flour, baked until light brown.

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 risen, grease your baking iron and muffin rings.

  2. Place 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, and when beaten light they help the muffins rise and stay tender.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which leavens the batter during the long rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the batter body and holds the risen structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and adds softness and browning from its sugars.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and contributes flavour.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise fully in a warm place. The yeast needs time and warmth to ferment and produce gas. If the batter rises too little, the muffins stay dense; if it is left too cold, fermentation slows and the rise is weak.

“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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