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Muffins

A yeast-based muffin made with flour, milk, butter, and yeast, baked in a pan.

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 batter

  1. Warm the milk.

  2. Strain the yeast through the warm milk.

  3. Add enough flour to create a batter-like consistency.

  4. Cover the mixture and let it rise in a warm place.

Make the dough

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

  2. Mix the yeast mixture with the flour.

  3. Work the mixture into a dough.

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

  5. Knead the dough.

Shape and cook

  1. Divide the dough into pieces the size of a small egg.

  2. Roll each piece into a dumpling shape.

  3. Place the rolled pieces on a tin covered with flannel.

  4. Flatten the first piece.

  5. Place the flattened piece on a hot plate or frying pan.

  6. Turn the muffins when the underside is lightly browned.

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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it rises and cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and feeds the yeast, helping the dough become soft and pliable.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the flour, tenderizing the crumb and adding richness.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.

The step that matters

Turn the muffins when the underside is lightly browned. Browning comes from surface heat reacting with sugars and proteins, so turning too early tears the soft dough and turning too late scorches it before the interior cooks through.

“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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