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Dessert

Yorkshire Muffins

Yorkshire muffins are small, soft cakes made with milk, eggs, butter, lard, yeast, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Yorkshire Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the butter, lard, and milk together.

  2. Sift in a little flour.

  3. Beat in the eggs and yeast.

  4. Continue adding flour until the mixture is soft.

  5. Set aside in a warm place to rise until light.

  6. Add enough flour to handle on a board.

  7. Return the dough to the bowl and let rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. When light, take bits of dough and roll them out to the size of a small saucer and ½ inch thick.

  2. Place in pans to line, then bake.

  3. Once baked, set on edge to cool.

  4. Store in a tight box if not eaten immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn light and airy.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen dough together as it bakes.
Butter and lard
Add fat for tenderness and a richer texture in the crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a soft, pliable dough.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until light. Yeast needs a warm place and enough time to produce gas; under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the gluten network must trap that gas to give a light crumb.

“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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