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English Muffins

English muffins are small, round breads made from flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, milk, eggs, and baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Beat the yolks with the milk.

  3. Mix the yolk mixture with the flour mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

Cook

  1. Bake on a griddle in muffin rings 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the muffins together as they cook.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding, while whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, causing the batter to rise and become airy.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter moisture and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give lightness. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leaving dense muffins, so fold gently until just combined.

“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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