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Dessert

Tennessee Muffins

A quick oven-baked muffin made with cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, lard or butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Tennessee Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

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

  3. Rub in the cold lard or butter.

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix with the milk.

  2. Combine the wet and dry ingredients to form a batter with the consistency of cupcake batter.

  3. Grease muffin rings well and fill them two-thirds full with the batter.

  4. Bake for 15 minutes.

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 + milktop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise and become light.
Lard or butter
Rubbed into the dry mix, it coats flour particles and tenderizes the crumb.
Cornmeal
Gives the muffins their characteristic grainy texture and corn flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the muffins together as they bake.

The step that matters

Rub in the cold lard or butter. Keeping the fat cold and rubbing it into the dry mix leaves small pieces coated in flour, which tenderizes the crumb. Melted or overworked fat blends in too fully and can make the muffins dense.

“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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