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Dessert

Flour Muffins

A simple muffin made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Flour Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the butter, sugar, salt, and egg yolk until very light.

  2. Add the milk and flour, and mix well.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white and baking powder.

  4. Cook immediately in a hot, well-greased muffin tin.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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).

Butter and flour 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

Egg
Yolk adds richness, and the whipped white traps air that helps the muffins rise.
Butter
Fat coats flour particles and tenderizes the crumb, adding richness and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture.
Flour
Forms the starch and protein structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas when wet and heated, causing the batter to rise and become light.

The step that matters

Cook immediately after folding in the egg white and baking powder. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet, and the whipped egg white holds air only briefly. Delaying the bake lets both lose lift, so the batter should go into the hot tin right away.

“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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