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Dessert

Raised Muffins

A yeast-raised muffin made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Raised Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and salt.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in warm milk and stir into the mixture.

  4. Add enough flour to create a stiff batter.

Rise and bake

  1. Prepare the muffins in the evening and let them rise overnight.

  2. About an hour before breakfast, fill well-greased muffin rings halfway with the batter.

  3. Let rise for about 30 minutes.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 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. Butter + milktop 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the muffins hold their shape as they rise and set.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, lifting the batter so the muffins rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff batter its structure and holds the rise.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer texture and flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning in the baked muffins.

The step that matters

Filling the rings halfway. The batter needs room to rise during the final proof and in the oven. Filling too full can cause overflow, while too little space can give dense muffins. Half-full rings leave room for the yeast to lift the batter.

“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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