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Dessert

Bread and Milk Muffins

A quick muffin made from bread crumbs, flour, milk, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Bread and Milk Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Pour boiling salted water over the crumbs and let them stand covered for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain off the liquid without pressing the crumbs.

  3. Beat in the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Add butter to the hot milk and mix in.

  2. Beat until smooth and nearly lukewarm before adding the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in muffin rings on a hot griddle.

  2. Serve hot and tear open, do not cut.

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. Egg + buttertop 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

Fine, dry crumbs
Provide the main body and structure of the bread.
Prepared flour
Adds structure and helps the batter hold its shape while cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the finished bread.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Beat to nearly lukewarm before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot batter can partly cook and form lumps, so let the mixture cool to nearly lukewarm first. The eggs then blend smoothly and set evenly while the muffins bake.

“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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