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Dessert

Plain Muffins

A simple muffin made with eggs, flour, milk, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain 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. Sift the baking powder, salt, and flour together.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Add the yolks to the milk, then mix in the melted butter.

  4. Combine the wet ingredients with the flour mixture.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately in a greased muffin pan at 400°F (200°C) or on a hot, greased griddle.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the muffins their structure.
Milk or cream
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the muffins rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to add lift and help browning.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold air that gives lift. Stirring or deflating them too hard knocks out the air, leaving dense muffins. Bake right after mixing, since the leavening starts working as soon as the batter is combined.

“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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