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English Muffins

English muffins are small, round breads made from flour, milk, water, yeast, salt, and sugar, baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in a little tepid water.

  2. Add the dissolved yeast to the batter when lukewarm.

  3. Stir the hot milk and water mixture into the flour.

  4. Beat the batter hard for 10 to 15 minutes until it forms a soft dough.

  5. Set the dough to rise overnight.

Shape the muffins

  1. Flour a board well.

  2. Drop large spoonfuls of dough onto the board.

  3. Flatten each spoonful with your hands.

  4. Shape the flattened dough into muffins.

  5. Let the muffins rise in a warm place until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the muffins on a griddle heated to medium heat for 6 minutes on one side.

  2. Turn the muffins over.

  3. Bake for the same time on the other side.

  4. Serve the muffins split.

  5. Toast the split muffins.

  6. Butter the toasted muffins immediately.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

White flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the muffins rise and become light.
Hot milk
Adds moisture and richness, and softens the texture of the dough.
Hot water
Adds moisture to the dough, hydrating the flour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Beat the batter hard for 10 to 15 minutes. Vigorous beating develops the gluten in the flour, giving the dough the elasticity to trap gas and rise into light muffins. Too little beating leaves a weak, slack dough.

“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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