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Dessert

Oatmeal or Hominy Muffins

A quick muffin made with oatmeal or hominy, flour, milk, sugar, egg, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Oatmeal or Hominy Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Mix the sifted dry ingredients.

Make the batter

  1. Add half of the milk, the beaten egg, and the remaining milk mixed with oatmeal or hominy.

  2. Beat thoroughly.

  3. Add the melted butter and mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into buttered muffin rings or gem pans.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the muffin together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the finished muffins.
Milk
Moistens the batter so the dry ingredients hydrate and mix evenly.
Oatmeal
Adds body and a soft, moist texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat thoroughly. Beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives structure, but overbeating makes muffins tough. Mix until just combined after the butter is added.

“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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