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Dessert

Corn Huffins

A quick baked corn muffin made with flour, cornmeal, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Corn Huffins

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, cornmeal, and baking powder.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the butter mixture.

  4. Dilute with milk.

  5. Add salt and beat the mixture well.

Bake

  1. Pour into well-buttered gem pans.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Butter + milktop 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).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the muffins together as they bake.
Cornmeal
Adds the coarse, grainy texture and corn flavor that defines the muffins.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, tenderizing the crumb and contributing flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the batter and set during baking.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and cornmeal and thins the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well. Thorough beating combines the ingredients evenly and builds some gluten and air, which affects rise and crumb. Overbeating after the flour is mixed can make muffins tough, so mix until just combined and evenly blended.

“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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