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Dessert

Dainty Corn Meal Muffins

A sweet muffin made with corn meal, flour, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Dainty Corn Meal 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, beat together the eggs and sugar.

  2. Add the sweet milk and salt, and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the corn meal, flour, and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Stir in the melted butter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into hot greased pans.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown.

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. Milk + corntop 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. Corn + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure so the muffins hold their shape.
Corn meal
Adds the coarse, grainy texture that defines cornmeal muffins.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the muffins rise and turn light.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness, moisture and rich flavor.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into hot greased pans. Batter poured into hot, greased pans begins setting and browning right away, helping the muffins rise well and release cleanly. Cold pans let the batter spread and stick before the structure forms.

“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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