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Dessert

Bread-bran Muffins

A muffin made with bran, sugar, bread crumbs, milk, egg, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread-bran 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.

Mix and combine

  1. Mix together the bran, sugar, bread crumbs, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg and add the milk (or half milk and half water).

  3. Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-oiled gem pans.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 25 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Flour + milktop 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).

Flour and milk 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

Bran
Adds fibre and a hearty, coarse texture to the muffin crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the muffins structure as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the batter a firmer, drier structure.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients until combined. Once liquid meets flour, gluten begins to form, so overmixing can make muffins tough. Stir only until no dry streaks remain.

“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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