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Dessert

Corn Meal Muffins

A batter of corn meal, milk, eggs, butter, and leavening baked into muffins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Corn Meal Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C) and grease a gem pan or muffin rings.

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 pint of corn meal with 1 cup of sour milk and dissolve 1 teaspoon of baking soda in it.

  2. Add 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon of melted butter or lard to the mixture.

  3. For the risen version, scald 1 cup of corn meal with 1 pint of milk, then add butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 egg, and ½ cup of yeast.

  4. Mix in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the batter rise, then bake for 20 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Corn meal
Forms the main body of the muffins and gives them their coarse, grainy texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as the muffins bake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to create gas that helps the muffins rise.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the batter in the risen version, producing gas that makes it rise.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise before baking. In the risen version, yeast needs time to ferment and trap gas in the batter. Baking before it has risen produces dense muffins that do not lift properly.

“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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