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Dessert

Yeast Muffins

A yeast-based muffin made with milk, flour, butter, eggs, yeast, and salt, baked until golden.

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 ↓

Yeast 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.

Make the batter

  1. Stir warm milk into flour in a large bowl.

  2. Add melted butter, beaten eggs, yeast, and salt, then mix well.

  3. Beat the batter vigorously until it blisters.

Rise and bake

  1. Cover and let rise overnight.

  2. Pour batter into deep muffin cups, filling each half full.

  3. When the batter rises to the top, bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + eggtop 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).

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 starch and gluten network that gives the muffins their structure.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the batter so the muffins become light and airy.
Eggs
Add protein that helps set the crumb and add richness and structure.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise fully before baking. Yeast needs time to produce gas and build structure during the overnight rise. Baking before the batter has risen to the top leaves the muffins dense, because the gas that lifts the crumb has not yet formed.

“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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