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Dessert

Corn Meal Muffins with Rice

A quick muffin made with cornmeal, rice, flour, and eggs, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Meal Muffins with Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Pour scalded milk over corn meal and let it stand for five minutes.

  2. Add hot rice and mix thoroughly with your fingers.

  3. Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar, then add to the mixture.

  4. Add melted butter and the yolk of the egg beaten very light.

  5. Lastly, fold in the egg white beaten until stiff.

Bake

  1. Bake in well buttered hot iron muffin cups for twenty minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Corn meal
Provides the coarse, gritty texture and the characteristic corn flavour of the muffins.
Egg
The yolk enriches and binds the batter, while the whipped white lifts and sets the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise and become light in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the muffins brown and release from the cups.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the hot oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg white. Whipped egg white traps air that gives lift. Stirring it vigorously knocks the air out, so fold gently and only until just combined to keep the muffins light.

“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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