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Dessert

Rye Muffins

A quick oven-baked muffin made with rye and wheat flour, molasses, milk, egg, and leavening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Rye Muffins

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg, then mix in the milk, salt, and molasses.

  3. Add the rye flour and mix well.

  4. Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar with the wheat flour, then combine with the wet ingredients.

Bake

  1. Grease a gem pan with a small amount of lard.

  2. Pour the batter into the hot gem pan and bake until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten for structure, giving the muffins a sturdy crumb.
Rye flour
Adds flavor and a denser texture, since it forms less gluten than wheat.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep brown color through browning.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter come together into a smooth mix.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the muffins rise.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the hot gem pan. The hot pan starts setting the outside immediately, which helps the muffins rise well and form a crisp, golden crust. Batter left sitting too long after the leavening starts can lose some of its rise.

“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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