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Famous Muffins

A yeast‑leavened batter made with milk, flour, butter, lard, eggs, sugar, and salt, baked into muffins.

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

Famous Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast in the tepid water.

  2. Beat the egg yolks, lard, butter, and sugar together.

  3. Add the flour and milk alternately, beating very hard.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the mixture along with the dissolved yeast.

  5. Set the batter aside at 11 a.m. for baking at 7 p.m.

Bake

  1. When ready to bake, dip out the batter without stirring and pour it into muffin pans.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provides the structure that holds the muffins once the batter sets in the oven.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift when beaten stiff, and yolks add richness and tenderness.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, causing the batter to rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tender texture, and flavor.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes to a soft texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form the batter's structure, along with browning from milk sugars.

The step that matters

Dip out the batter without stirring. Stirring or pressing the risen batter knocks out the gas bubbles the yeast has built up, so the muffins come out denser and flatter.

“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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