Name: Rice Muffins
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; 1 cup milk; ½ cup hot cooked rice; 1 egg; 5 teaspoons baking powder; 2 tablespoons melted butter; 2 tablespoons sugar; ½ teaspoon salt

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 ↓

Rice Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Mix and sift flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.
Add half of the milk and the beaten egg, then mix in the remaining milk combined with rice.
Beat thoroughly and then add melted butter.

Bake

Bake in buttered muffin rings or gem pans.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 muffin's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg: Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking so the muffins rise and become light.
Milk: Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Butter: Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich flavor.

“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.