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Bread Muffins

A quick bread muffin made with grated bread, milk, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pour the milk over the bread crumbs and let them soak for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and stir them into the mixture along with the salt.

  3. Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar with the flour.

  4. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture.

  5. If the mixture is not thick enough, add more flour cautiously.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Fill muffin or puff pans a little more than half full.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Bread
Soaked in milk, it softens and gives the muffins a moist, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the muffins their structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the muffins rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with the baking soda to produce gas for lift.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softens the bread, helping the batter combine smoothly.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that gives lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the batter and leaves the muffins dense.

“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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