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Potato Muffins

A savory muffin made from mashed potatoes, flour, eggs, yeast, and clarified butter, baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Potato Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Scoop the flesh from the potatoes and beat until smooth.

  2. Add salt, clarified butter, and enough warm water to make a thin batter.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them into the batter along with the flour.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in lukewarm water and knead it with the yeast into the dough.

  5. Let the dough rise overnight.

Bake and serve

  1. The next morning, bake the muffins in rings on a griddle.

  2. When one side is lightly browned, turn them to brown the other side.

  3. To serve, tear each muffin around the edge, toast on both sides, divide, butter, and quarter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that give the muffins a soft, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold together as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once combined with liquid.
Fresh yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the dough and giving it an airy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the dough and help it rise and brown.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Turning the muffins on the griddle. Cooking over steady, moderate heat lets the centre cook through before the outside darkens. Turning only once a side is lightly browned keeps the surface from burning and the interior from staying raw.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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