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Whole Wheat Muffins

A baked muffin made with whole wheat flour, egg, milk, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Whole Wheat Muffins

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Whole Wheat Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven until hot.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the milk, sugar, and baking powder.

  2. Gradually add the whole wheat flour, mixing until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the hot pan.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Whole wheat flour
Provides the main structure of the muffins.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Gradually add the whole wheat flour, mixing until combined. Mixing only until the flour is just combined keeps the batter tender. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make muffins tough and dense.

“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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