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Yeast Muffins

A simple yeast-based muffin made with milk, flour, butter, eggs, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Yeast 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. Stir warm milk into flour.

  2. Add melted butter, beaten eggs, yeast, and salt.

  3. Beat the batter vigorously until it blisters.

  4. Let it rise overnight.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into deep muffin cups, filling each half full.

  2. When batter rises to the top, bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 25 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 main structure of the muffins as its proteins set in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the muffins hold their shape and crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, giving the muffins their light, open texture.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps form the batter's structure and moisture.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until it reaches the top of the cups. Yeast gas expands the batter, so under-proofed batter bakes dense while over-proofed batter can collapse. Filling cups only half full leaves room for the final rise in the oven.

“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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