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Dessert

Twin Mountain Muffins

A quick, golden muffin made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Twin Mountain 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

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

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  3. Gradually add the sugar and then the salt.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg lightly and mix it with the milk.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. Mix in the sifted flour and baking powder until just combined.

  4. Pour the batter into buttered gem tins.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 25 minutes or 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. Butter + milktop 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the muffins a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the muffins brown as they bake.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure to the crumb as it sets.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the muffins as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour and baking powder until just combined. Overmixing once flour meets liquid develops gluten, which makes muffins tough and dense. Stop as soon as no dry flour 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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