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Dessert

Rice Muffins

Rice muffins made with boiled rice, egg, milk, flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Rice Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the boiled rice, egg, sugar, and salt.

  3. Add the milk and melted butter, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder.

Make and bake

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  2. Pour the batter into muffin tins.

  3. Bake for 20-25 minutes or 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 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 main structure that sets the muffin crumb as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter forms.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the crumb.
Boiled rice
Adds moisture and a soft, tender texture to the muffin crumb.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Stir only until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the muffins tough and dense rather than tender.

“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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