Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Muffins

A simple yeast muffin made with milk, flour, butter, eggs, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Plain Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the milk and add the butter; let it cool until lukewarm.

  2. Add the yeast (or the cake dissolved in ¼ cup of warm water) and salt; beat well.

  3. Cover and let it stand in a warm place (65°F) overnight.

Bake

  1. Beat the eggs separately; add the yolks, then the whites, and beat well.

  2. Let it stand for 15 minutes, then bake in greased muffin rings on a griddle or in the oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the muffins rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, with whites helping the muffins hold their shape and lift.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the muffins their body and structure.
Milk
Provides liquid to hydrate the flour and adds softness and flavour.

The step that matters

Overnight rising in a warm place. Yeast works slowly and depends on temperature; a cold spot stalls fermentation, so the batter may not rise enough, while a much warmer spot can over-ferment it.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes