Name: Fox's Corn Muffins
Ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose flour; ½ cup cornmeal; ½ teaspoon salt; 2½ tablespoons baking powder; heaped tablespoon butter

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fox's Corn Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking powder.
Add the butter and mix well.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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

All-purpose flour: Provides the main structure that holds the muffin together as it bakes.
Cornmeal: Gives the muffins their coarse texture and distinct corn flavor.
Baking powder: Releases gas as it reacts with moisture and heat, making the muffins rise.
Butter: Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.

“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.