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Dessert

Yeast Muffins

A sweet yeast muffin made with flour, milk, butter, salt, yeast, eggs, and baked.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the milk with the flour.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add them to the flour along with melted butter and salt.

  3. Stir in the yeast.

  4. Let the mixture rise overnight.

  5. For supper muffins, let the mixture rise for 4 hours before baking.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gently fold the stiff egg whites into the batter.

  3. Grease the molds.

  4. Heat the molds.

  5. Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Flour + milktop 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure once hydrated with milk and eggs.
Yeast
Ferments the batter during rising, producing gas that leavens the muffins.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whipped whites add lightness and lift.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter moisture and body.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff, then folded gently. Overmixing deflates the air they hold, and the batter loses the lift it needs to rise and bake into a light muffin.

“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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