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Dessert

Philadelphia Muffins

A yeasted muffin made with milk, eggs, lard, butter, salt, sifted flour, and yeast, baked in tin rings.

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 ↓

Philadelphia Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter, lard, and salt with the milk and warm it until lukewarm.

  2. Stir in enough sifted flour to make a stiff batter and beat it well.

  3. Add the yeast and set the mixture aside to rise for about 1 hour if using for tea.

Shape and bake

  1. Use tin rings to shape the muffins, filling them only partially.

  2. Bake the muffins for a few moments until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Not stated in the method, so their role here cannot be confirmed from the record.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises before baking, giving the muffins an airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter structure that holds the muffins' shape while they rise and bake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the crumb and contributing flavor.
Lard
Adds fat, contributing tenderness and a rich texture to the muffins.

The step that matters

Warming the milk until lukewarm. Yeast is killed by overly hot liquid and works poorly when cold, so the milk should be only lukewarm before the yeast is added.

“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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