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Tottenham Muffins

Yeast muffins made with eggs, flour, milk, clarified butter, fresh yeast, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Tottenham Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until lightly frothed.

  2. Stir the eggs into the flour and add salt.

  3. Add enough lukewarm milk to make a thick batter.

  4. Stir in the clarified butter and fresh yeast.

  5. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise in a warm place until lightly risen, about 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a floured board and let them rest for 15 minutes.

  2. Place the dough into muffin hoops and bake until one side is slightly brown, then turn to brown the other side.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and their beaten air helps lighten the dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the muffins their body and chewy crumb.
Fresh yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during rising, which makes the dough light and airy.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour, and helps browning on the surface.
Lukewarm milk
Hydrates the flour to form a thick batter and gives the yeast a gentle environment.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until lightly risen. Under-rising leaves the muffins dense, while over-rising weakens the gluten and can cause collapse. Yeast activity depends on warmth, so a warm place keeps the rise steady.

“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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