Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Corn Muffins
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Mix the lard or butter with the sifted cornmeal.
Pour the boiling water over the mixture and stir until lukewarm.
Add the beaten eggs and salt, and mix well.
Bake
Pour the batter into gem pans and bake.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Forms the body of the muffins and gives them their characteristic corn flavour and grainy texture.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the muffins set in the oven.
- Lard or butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel in the crumb.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the cornmeal and softens its starch, so the batter becomes moist and workable.
The step that matters
Pouring the boiling water over the cornmeal. Boiling water must be stirred in fully so the cornmeal hydrates evenly. Pouring it over the fat and meal gelatinises the starch, giving a smooth batter instead of dry lumps.
“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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