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Dessert

Indian Meal Muffins

A muffin made with milk, eggs, cornmeal, flour, butter, lard, 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 the batter

  1. Heat the butter and milk until tepid.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix in the milk and baking soda dissolved in water.

  3. Combine the cornmeal and flour with the cream of tartar.

  4. Beat the egg whites until frothy and add them alternately with the dry ingredients to the yolk mixture, along with the sugar.

Bake

  1. Blend quickly and lightly, then 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 and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce carbon dioxide, helping the muffins rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with the baking soda, releasing gas for rising and balancing the batter.
Fine cornmeal
Forms the main structure and gives the muffins their characteristic texture and flavor.
Flour
Adds gluten-based structure that supports the cornmeal and helps the muffins hold their shape.
Mixed butter and lard
Adds fat for tenderness and moisture in the crumb.

The step that matters

Blend quickly and lightly, then bake immediately. Once the baking soda and cream of tartar are moistened they begin releasing gas, and the whipped egg whites are fragile. Overmixing knocks out air and develops gluten, while delay lets the gas escape, so the muffins can come out flat and dense.

“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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