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Dessert

Potato and Corn Muffins

A quick muffin made from mashed potato, corn meal, milk, and egg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato and Corn Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Soften the mashed potato with the milk, working out all the lumps.

  2. Stir in corn meal until the batter is thick enough to drop easily from a spoon.

  3. Add the whipped egg and beat until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop the batter into hot gem pans and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mashed potato
Adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the muffins.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the muffins structure as they set.
Corn meal
Thickens the batter and provides the grainy texture and corn flavor.

The step that matters

Working out the lumps in the potato and milk. Mashed potato that is not fully smoothed into the milk leaves lumps that stay in the baked muffins. Breaking them up first gives an even batter that thickens evenly when the corn meal is added.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, corn):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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