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Corn Muffins

A quick baked cornmeal muffin with butter, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 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.

Prepare

  1. Rub the butter into the cornmeal and flour.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, and baking powder, and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and combine it with the milk, adding more milk to fill the cup if needed.

  4. Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Cornmeal
Provides the gritty, coarse texture that gives corn muffins their characteristic bite.
All-purpose flour
Supplies gluten-forming structure so the muffins hold their shape.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift the muffins as they bake.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and adds moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Mixing until just combined keeps the muffins tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make them tough and dense, while the baking powder needs to be folded in promptly to lift well.

“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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