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Dessert

Oatmeal Muffins

A yeast-leavened muffin made with oats, milk, water, flour, butter, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Oats and wheat work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 473 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oatmeal Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Boil the oats and butter in 1 cup of hot milk for 1 minute.

  2. Let the mixture stand until lukewarm.

  3. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in ¼ cup of lukewarm water, then combine with the oat mixture.

  4. Add the flours and salt, and beat well until the batter is thick enough to drop heavily from a spoon.

  5. Cover and let rise in a warm place until light, about 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Fill well-greased muffin pans two-thirds full and let rise for 40 minutes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 25 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. Oats + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and become light.
Rolled oats
Add body and a hearty texture to the batter.
Whole wheat flour
Adds structure and a nutty, slightly coarse texture.
White flour
Provides gluten for structure so the muffins hold their rise.
Butter
Adds fat for softness and a rich flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the oat mixture must be lukewarm before the dissolved yeast is combined. Too hot and the batter will not rise.

“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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