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Dessert

Mountain Muffins

A simple muffin made with butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mountain 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  3. Add the sugar and beaten egg to the creamed butter and mix well.

  4. Sift the baking powder with the flour and add it to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered gem pans.

  2. Bake for 25 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Adds fat that creates a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the muffins brown during baking.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, lifting the muffins as they bake.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes evenly.

The step that matters

Mix the flour in gently, alternating with the milk. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, and overmixing makes the muffins tough and dense. Stop mixing as soon as the flour is just combined.

“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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