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Cornmeal Muffins

A quick sweet cornmeal muffin made with milk, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, and sugar.

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 ↓

Cornmeal 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. Stir the boiling milk and cornmeal together.

  2. Add the butter, salt, and sugar.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and stir them in when the mixture is not scalding hot.

  4. Stir in the flour and baking powder.

  5. Beat the egg whites with 1 teaspoon of sugar to a stiff foam and fold them in last.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into greased muffin pans.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main body of the muffin and gives it its grainy, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter and the whipped whites add lift and a lighter crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise and become light.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal so it swells and softens into a smooth batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a tender, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites last. Whipped whites hold the air that makes the muffins light. Stirring them in too hard or too late knocks out that air, leaving dense muffins. The yolks should also go in only once the mixture has cooled, since very hot batter can scramble them.

“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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