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Dessert

Dabney Muffins

A yeasted muffin made with milk, water, flour, butter, salt, and yeast, baked on a greaseless griddle.

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

Dabney Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix equal parts of milk and water in a bowl.

  2. Melt the butter in the milk and water mixture until lukewarm.

  3. Stir in the flour, salt, and yeast until well combined.

  4. Cover and let the mixture sit overnight.

Shape and cook

  1. In the morning, roll out the dough into strips 4 inches long and 2 inches wide.

  2. Let the strips rest in a warm place for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Bake on a griddle without grease, turning constantly until cooked through.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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.
Yeast
Ferments the dough overnight, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the surface brown.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a richer flavor.

The step that matters

Turning the strips on the griddle. Turning constantly without grease cooks the dough evenly through without scorching the outside. Turning too little lets one side burn while the center stays raw.

“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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