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Dessert

Sour Cream Muffins

Sour cream muffins made with sour cream, salt, baking soda, flour, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Sour Cream Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the sour cream, salt, and baking soda dissolved in a little warm water.

  3. Gradually add flour until you achieve a thick batter.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into muffin tins, filling each about two-thirds full.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden 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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the muffins rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the muffins as they bake.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour gluten develops with mixing, so stirring in flour gradually and only until a thick batter forms keeps the muffins tender rather than tough.

“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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