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Dessert

Sour Milk Muffins

Sour milk muffins are quick, light cakes made with eggs, sour milk, flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Sour Milk Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it to the eggs.

  3. Mix in the sugar and salt.

  4. Gradually add the flour and mix until well combined.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven pans.

  2. Grease the pans well.

  3. Fill the pans half full.

  4. 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and trap air from beating for lift.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas that makes the muffins rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour and mix until well combined. Mixing only until the flour is incorporated keeps gluten development limited, so the muffins stay tender rather than tough. Overmixing develops gluten and makes the crumb dense.

“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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