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Dessert

Flour Muffins

A quick oven-baked muffin made with egg, butter, sugar, milk, flour, salt, 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C) and grease your muffin tins.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the butter, sugar, salt, and egg yolk until light and fluffy.

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

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

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tins and bake immediately.

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

Flour
Forms the main structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the muffins rise and turn light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that gives a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and moistens the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white and baking powder. Folding gently keeps the air in the stiffly beaten egg white, which helps the muffins rise. Overmixing deflates that foam and toughens the batter. Baking promptly matters because baking powder starts releasing gas once it meets liquid.

“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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