Skip to main content
Baking

Corn Muffins

A batter of cornmeal, milk, eggs, butter, and salt baked into muffins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Corn Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the cornmeal with boiling water and beat until smooth.

  2. Add salt and butter, then let it cool.

  3. Once cool, mix in the milk and beaten egg yolks.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Bake in buttered rings at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the main structure of the muffin crumb once scalded and set.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding, while whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the cornmeal so the batter bakes tender.
Butter
Adds fat for softness and a rich flavour in the crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten egg whites trap air that gives the muffins lift. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the foam, leaving dense, flat muffins.

“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.

More corn muffins recipes

You might also like