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Dessert

Queen of Muffins

A sweet, butter-based muffin with flour, sugar, eggs, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Queen of 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. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and combine.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  5. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  6. Pour the batter into buttered gem pans.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for twenty-five 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the muffins as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form a batter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture alternately with the milk. Mixing too vigorously once flour is wet develops gluten, which can make the muffins tough. Add the flour and milk in portions and mix just until combined so the crumb stays tender.

“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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