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Muffins

Yeast muffins made with flour, milk, butter, rolled into dumpling shape and fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Muffins

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 ↓

Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the milk and strain the yeast through it.

  2. Add enough flour to create a batter consistency, cover, and let it rise in a warm place.

  3. Rub the butter into the remaining flour until well combined.

  4. Mix the yeast mixture with the flour and work into a dough.

  5. Cover and let it rise again in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Shape and cook

  1. Knead the dough and divide it into pieces the size of a small egg.

  2. Roll each piece into a dumpling shape and place on a tin under a flannel.

  3. Once the last piece is rolled, flatten the first and place it on a frying pan.

  4. Cook until the underside is lightly browned, then turn to brown the other side.

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. 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid and yeast.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the dough stay soft and tender.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives a richer crumb.
Heavy yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.

The step that matters

Cook until the underside is lightly browned, then turn. Cooking over steady moderate heat lets the centre cook through while the surface browns. Too high a heat scorches the outside and leaves the inside doughy.

“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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