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Cornmeal Muffins

A quick baked muffin made with sweet milk, cornmeal, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cornmeal Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Boil the sweet milk.

  2. In a bowl, combine the boiling milk and cornmeal.

  3. Add the butter, salt, and sugar to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and stir them in when the mixture is not scalding hot.

  5. Stir in the flour and baking powder.

  6. Beat the egg whites with 1 teaspoon of sugar until stiff, then gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Grease muffin pans and pour the batter in.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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 + buttertop 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites add lightness and help the muffins rise.
Cornmeal
Provides the main structure and coarse, grainy texture of the muffins.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the muffins rise in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Adds extra structure so the muffins hold together alongside the cornmeal.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped until stiff trap air that expands in the oven and lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard would deflate it and leave dense muffins.

“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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