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Dessert

Cranberry Muffins

A sweet muffin with cranberries, made with flour, eggs, baking powder, milk, sugar, butter.

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 ↓

Cranberry Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add the milk and sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Add the melted butter and sifted flour mixed with baking powder, stirring to form a smooth batter.

  3. Gently fold in the halved cranberries.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased muffin tins and 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the muffins rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form a batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the muffins and helps them brown lightly in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the halved cranberries. Overmixing once the flour is added develops gluten, which makes muffins tough. Folding gently keeps the batter tender and spreads the cranberries evenly without breaking them down.

“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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