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Dessert

Bread Muffins

A quick muffin made from stale bread crumbs, milk, flour, eggs, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread 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. Soak the bread-crumbs in the milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs, separating the yolks and whites.

  3. Add the yolks, butter, and salt to the soaked bread and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour and beat until smooth.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and baking powder. Mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Bake in greased gem pans at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes, or in greased rings on a hot, greased griddle.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten and folded in, lighten its texture.
Bread-crumbs
Soaked in milk, they bind the batter and give the muffins a moist, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the muffins rise and become airy.
Milk
Hydrates the bread-crumbs and adds moisture to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites and baking powder. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the beaten whites and the gas from the baking powder, which give lift. Vigorous mixing knocks out the air and leaves 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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