Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Water Muffins
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the batter
In a bowl, combine the yeast and lukewarm water.
Add a little coarse sea salt.
Gradually stir in enough sifted flour to make a thick batter.
Cover the bowl and place it in a warm spot to rise until light and the middle is hot.
Bake and serve
Grease muffin rings and butter the insides.
Pour a ladleful of batter into each ring.
Bake over a quick fire (400°F / 200°C) until cooked through.
When serving, do not cut them; split them open by hand.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Yeast
- Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
- Sifted flour
- Provides the structure that holds the risen batter together as it bakes.
- Lukewarm water
- Hydrates the flour and activates the yeast to form a batter.
- Butter
- Greases the rings so the muffins release cleanly and brown the surface.
The step that matters
Letting the batter rise until light. Yeast needs enough time in a warm spot to produce gas; an under-risen batter bakes dense because the gas that lifts the structure has not built up.
“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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