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Dessert

Plain Muffins

A simple muffin made with flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, egg, milk, butter, and salt.

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

Plain Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and grease the muffin rings.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda and mix it with the cream of tartar.

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, beaten egg, milk, melted butter, and salt.

  2. Beat the mixture hard until well combined.

  3. Fill the hot muffin rings half full with the batter.

  4. Bake in the hot oven for nearly half an hour.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the muffins rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda, adding lift and a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the muffins as its proteins and starches set in the oven.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the structure as it bakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Fill the hot muffin rings half full with the batter. The acid-base reaction between baking soda and cream of tartar starts as soon as the batter is mixed, so the batter should go into hot rings and the oven without delay to keep the gas bubbles that give lift.

“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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