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Dessert

Muffins, Soda

A quick batter muffin made with all-purpose flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, lard, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Muffins, Soda

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk.

  2. Stir the cream of tartar into the flour and sift it together.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix the flour mixture with the dissolved soda and milk.

  2. Bake the muffins as soon as possible after mixing.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure as its proteins form gluten and set when heated.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid and moisture to release carbon dioxide gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acts as the acid that reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to produce rising gas.
Lard
Coats the flour particles, tenderising the crumb and limiting gluten development.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and dissolves the bicarbonate of soda.

The step that matters

Bake as soon as possible after mixing. The gas that lifts the muffins forms as soon as the wet and acidic ingredients combine. It escapes steadily over time, so waiting before baking leaves the muffins flatter and denser.

“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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