Skip to main content
Dessert

Muffins

A quick oven-baked muffin made with sour milk, eggs, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Muffins

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the baking soda into the sour milk.

  3. Add the salt and the well-beaten eggs to the milk mixture.

  4. Gradually mix in enough flour to create a batter that will drop from a spoon.

Bake

  1. Half fill well-buttered muffin rings with the batter.

  2. Bake quickly until golden brown.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sour milk
Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds tangy flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the muffins set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas, helping the muffins rise.
Flour
Forms the structure of the muffins as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the flour. Adding flour gradually and stopping once the batter just drops from a spoon keeps it from becoming overworked. Too much flour or too much mixing makes muffins dense and tough, while the leavening from the baking soda needs a batter loose enough to rise.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes