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Mush Muffins

A moist cornmeal muffin made with milk, butter, eggs, and Graham flour.

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 ↓

Mush Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cook the cornmeal in boiling milk in a double boiler for 1 hour, stirring often.

  2. While still hot, stir in the butter and let it cool.

  3. Thin the mixture with cold milk and beat to a smooth batter.

  4. Whip in the beaten yolks of the eggs and the Graham flour mixed with baking powder.

  5. Beat for another minute, then fold in the stiffened egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake in small, well-greased tins.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the muffin and gives it its coarse, grainy texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Graham flour
Adds structure and a nutty, wholesome flavour to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffened egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives lift. Beating them further or stirring them in roughly deflates the foam, so the muffins come out dense. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

“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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