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Soft Muffins

Soft muffins made with milk, butter, eggs, yeast, salt, and flour, baked in a baking iron.

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 ↓

Soft Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk and butter.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light and stir them into the milk mixture.

  3. Add the yeast and salt, then gradually mix in enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  4. Let the batter rise in a warm place for about 3 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease your baking iron and rings, then set the iron on the rings.

  2. Bake until light brown.

  3. Do not cut the muffins with a knife; pull them apart with your hands.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Add structure and richness, and when beaten light they help lift the batter.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, giving the muffins their airy, open texture.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that holds the stiff batter and the risen crumb together.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and adds softness and browning.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas steadily. If the batter is too cold, the rise is slow or weak, and the muffins come out dense instead of soft and light.

“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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