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Dessert

Plain Muffins

A simple muffin made with eggs, flour, milk, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift the baking powder, salt, and flour together.

  3. Beat the eggs, separating the whites and yolks.

Make the batter

  1. Add the yolks to the milk or cream and mix well.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until just mixed.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin and bake for 20-25 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. 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that sets the muffin crumb.
Milk or cream
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the muffins moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the muffins rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic components to produce gas, helping the muffins rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes whipped egg whites for better volume.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the muffins lift. Stirring or overmixing them deflates the foam, so fold gently and only until no white streaks remain.

“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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