Name: Rice Muffins
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; 1 egg; 1 cup hot cooked rice; 2 tablespoons melted butter or any fat; 5 teaspoons baking powder; 2 tablespoons sugar; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 cup milk

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 ↓

Rice Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

Mix and sift the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.
Add half of the milk and the beaten egg.
Mix in the remaining milk combined with the rice.
Beat the mixture thoroughly.
Add the melted butter or fat.

Bake

Bake in greased muffin rings placed in a greased pan or in greased gem pans.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Flour: Forms the structure of the muffins as its proteins set during baking.
Egg: Adds structure and helps bind the batter together.
Rice: Adds moisture and a tender crumb to the batter.
Baking powder: Releases gas that makes the muffins rise.
Butter or fat: Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.

“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.