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Dessert

New England Graham Muffins

A quick muffin made with Graham flour, wheat flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

New England Graham 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).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the Graham flour, wheat flour, salt, and baking powder.

  5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and beat until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered muffin pans.

  2. Bake for 20 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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add fat and tenderness to the muffin crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for sweetness and a softer, more tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the muffins set in the oven.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flours and helps form the batter.
Graham flour
Main flour giving the muffins their coarse, nutty, whole-grain character.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise during baking.

The step that matters

Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and beat until well combined. Mixing until just combined keeps the batter tender. Over-beating develops gluten in the wheat flour, which can make muffins tough. Baking powder begins releasing gas once wet, so the batter should go into the pans and the oven promptly.

“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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