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Dessert

Strawberry Muffins

A baked muffin with a strawberry filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Strawberry 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  4. Beat the yolks of the eggs until foamy.

  5. Make a well in the flour mixture and add the butter, sugar, egg yolks, and milk. Mix until you have a smooth batter.

  6. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the batter into muffin tins and bake immediately until golden.

  2. Once baked, split the muffins, butter them, and fill with strawberries.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the structure that holds the muffins together as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, with the whites lightening the crumb when folded in.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the muffins rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the muffins.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air that helps the muffins rise. Overmixing deflates them and leaves a dense, tough result, so fold just until combined.

“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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