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Dessert

Indian Meal Muffins

A muffin made with fine meal, flour, butter, lard, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Indian Meal Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the butter and milk until tepid.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Add the milk.

Make the batter

  1. Mix in the baking soda dissolved in water.

  2. Combine the fine meal and flour with the cream of tartar.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  4. Fold the egg whites alternately into the mixture with the sugar.

  5. Blend quickly and lightly.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately in rings or tins.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten to froth, add lift and a light crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the muffins rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with the baking soda to produce rising gas and a tender texture.
Fine meal
Forms the main body of the muffins, giving structure and a coarse, sturdy crumb.
Flour
Adds structure that holds the muffins together as they bake.
Butter and lard mixed
Fat that adds richness, moisture and tenderness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Blend quickly and lightly, then bake immediately. The baking soda and cream of tartar start releasing gas as soon as they are wet, and the whipped egg whites hold air only briefly. Overmixing knocks out that air and toughens the crumb, so folding gently and baking straight away keeps the muffins light.

“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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