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Baking

Indian Corn Muffins

A quick batter of flour, milk, salt, baking powder, Indian corn, and butter baked in muffin tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Corn Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the salt and baking powder with the flour.

  2. Pour in the warm milk and mix well.

  3. Add enough ground Indian corn to make a thin batter.

  4. Let the batter sit for two hours.

  5. Stir in the melted butter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into muffin tins and bake.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the wet batter, helping the muffins rise and become light.
Ground indian corn
Adds a coarse, grainy texture and corn flavour to the muffins.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour and corn, giving the batter its liquid and soft crumb.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let the batter sit for two hours. Resting lets the flour and cornmeal fully absorb the liquid, which softens the grain and gives a more even texture. Because baking powder begins reacting once it is wet, the batter should go into the tins and into the oven promptly after resting and mixing.

“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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