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Dessert

White Raised Muffins

A simple white muffin made with milk, sugar, butter, egg, yeast, and flour, baked after overnight rise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

White Raised Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the milk and melt the butter in it.

  2. Add the sugar, egg, and yeast once the mixture is cool.

  3. Stir in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

Rise and bake

  1. Cover and let the batter rise overnight.

  2. Bake in muffin rings or pans.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and gives the muffins an airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the risen batter and sets the muffin shape.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise overnight. Yeast needs time and a warm enough environment to produce gas steadily. Under-rising leaves dense muffins, while the batter must be cool enough at mixing so the yeast is not killed by heat.

“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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