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Corn Muffins

A quick batter of eggs, cornmeal, buttermilk, butter, baking soda, and salt baked into muffins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Corn 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. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add 1 cup of buttermilk to the eggs.

  3. Mix in the cornmeal and butter.

  4. Stir in the remaining ½ cup of buttermilk, baking soda, and salt.

Bake

  1. Grease your muffin tins.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + buttermilktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + buttermilktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the muffin and gives its characteristic grainy texture.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with baking soda to help the muffins rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the buttermilk, baking soda, and salt. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic buttermilk, so the batter should be baked promptly to trap the gas before it escapes and the muffins fall flat.

“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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