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Dessert

New English Muffins

Soft dough muffins made with flour, baking powder, salt, butter, and milk, baked on a buttered griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

New English Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Mix in the butter and add milk to form a soft dough.

Cook on the griddle

  1. Butter muffin rings and place them on a hot buttered griddle.

  2. Pour the batter into the rings and cook slowly, browning each side.

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. 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).

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 structure that holds the muffins together as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the muffins rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the surface brown on the griddle.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough that can be shaped and cooked.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, browning each side. Low, gentle heat lets the centre cook through before the outside darkens. High heat would brown the surface while the inside stays raw and doughy.

“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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