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Burlington Muffins

A potato-based muffin with flour, butter, milk, yeast, sugar, salt, and eggs baked at 400°F.

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 ↓

Burlington 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. Melt the butter in the warm milk.

  2. Add the salt, sugar, milk, and two-thirds of the flour, mixing well.

  3. Break in the eggs and beat until the mixture is light.

  4. Add the yeast, ensuring the batter is lukewarm, then add the remaining flour and beat well.

Rise and bake

  1. Drop the batter into buttered gem pans, filling them halfway.

  2. Allow the muffins to rise for 4 to 6 hours.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Forms the gluten network that gives the muffins their structure.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter hold its light texture.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and gives the muffins their open crumb.
Potato
Adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.

The step that matters

Ensuring the batter is lukewarm when adding the yeast. Yeast works best at lukewarm temperatures. If the batter is too hot, the yeast can be killed, and if it is too cold, the rise slows and becomes unreliable.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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