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Corn Meal Muffins

A quick oven-baked muffin made with flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, sugar, egg, milk, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Meal Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Sift together the flour, corn meal, salt, baking powder, and sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light, then add the milk.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and add the melted butter.

  3. Stir quickly and lightly to form a smooth batter.

  4. Drop the batter into greased gem pans.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the muffin together as it bakes.
Corn meal
Adds coarse texture and corn flavour to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the muffins to rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and adds moisture to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir quickly and lightly to form a smooth batter. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes muffins tough and dense. Stirring just until combined keeps the crumb tender.

“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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