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Corn Meal Muffins

A quick cornmeal muffin made with sour milk, eggs, butter, flour, salt, baking soda, and cooked in muffin rings or greased griddles.

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 ↓

Corn Meal Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the cornmeal and flour together.

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sour milk, and baking soda.

  2. Add the sifted cornmeal and flour mixture to the wet ingredients.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Cook

  1. Cook in hot muffin rings or greased griddles.

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. 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. Egg + flourtop 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).

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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and the whites, folded in last, lighten the batter's texture.
Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the muffins rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, leavening the batter.
Cornmeal
Forms the main structure and gives the muffins their coarse, grainy texture.
Flour
Adds structure and helps the cornmeal hold together.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives lift. Folding them in gently at the end, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and helps the muffins stay light.

“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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