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Corn Muffins

Corn muffins made with cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together corn meal, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Scald the mixture with boiling milk and let it cool slightly.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and melted butter to the mixture.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into heated, buttered gem pans.

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

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks bind and enrich the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a lighter crumb.
Corn meal
Forms the main body of the muffins and gives them their characteristic grainy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the muffins rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and flavor.
Milk
Hydrates the corn meal as it scalds, adding moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter. Stiff whites hold air that gives the muffins lift. Folding gently keeps that air in, so deflating the batter by stirring hard leads to dense muffins.

“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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