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 ↓
Corn Meal 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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Make the batter
Beat the baking soda into the sour milk until it foams.
Mix the salt into the corn meal, then add the milk and beat well.
Stir in the melted lard and butter.
Finally, add the well-beaten egg and mix until combined.
Bake
Pour the batter into molds and bake until golden.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Corn meal
- Forms the body of the muffin and gives its characteristic grainy texture.
- Sour milk
- Supplies moisture and reacts with baking soda to help the muffins rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
- Lard and butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
- Egg
- Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
The step that matters
Beat the baking soda into the sour milk until it foams. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Letting the foam form before the other ingredients are added helps the gas be trapped in the batter, so the muffins rise properly.
“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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