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Dessert

Rice Muffins

A baked muffin made with flour, milk, rice, salt, butter, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Rice Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Melt the butter in the rice.

  2. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly, ensuring the batter is not too warm for the yeast.

Rise and bake

  1. Mix at night, and in the morning, when light, drop into buttered gem pans.

  2. Let them stand for 15 to 20 minutes, then bake.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Warm boiled rice
Adds starch and moisture for a soft, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise, giving a light texture.

The step that matters

Keep the batter cool enough for the yeast. Yeast is alive, and a batter that is too warm can kill it or over-ferment it, so the muffins may fail to rise properly. Mixing thoroughly spreads the yeast evenly so the rise is consistent throughout.

“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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