Skip to main content
Main

Rye Muffins

A quick baked muffin made with rye meal, wheat flour, milk, sugar, salt, baking powder, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Rye Muffins

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the rye meal.

  2. Sift the wheat flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder into the bowl.

  3. Beat the eggs until light, then add the milk and mix well.

  4. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Turn the mixture into buttered muffin pans.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rye meal
Provides the rye flavour and a denser, more tender crumb than wheat flour alone.
Wheat flour
Supplies gluten for structure so the muffins hold their shape while baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flours, helping the batter come together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, giving the muffins lift as they bake.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients until just combined. Mixing only until the batter comes together keeps gluten development limited, so the muffins stay tender rather than tough. Overmixing toughens the crumb and can cause uneven rising.

“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.

You might also like

Wheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes