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Dessert

Clermont Muffins

A soft, small muffin made with eggs, butter, cream, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Clermont Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the eggs, butter, cream, and salt until well combined.

  3. Gradually add flour until you achieve a very soft dough.

  4. Shape the dough into small balls, about the size of an English walnut.

  5. Roll each ball out into thin cakes, roughly the size of a dessert plate and not thicker than paper.

Bake

  1. Bake the cakes in a pan in front of the hot oven until golden brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + teatop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Tea + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together449 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the finished muffins.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the very soft dough tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin cakes together as they bake.

The step that matters

Rolling the cakes thin. Cakes rolled thicker than paper will not cook through and brown evenly in the hot oven. Thin dough dries and sets quickly, giving the characteristic light, golden texture.

“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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