Name: Corn Muffins
Ingredients: 1 pint cornmeal; 1 pint buttermilk; ½ teaspoon baking soda; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 egg; 1 tablespoon melted lard

Why it works: Buttermilk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,986 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Corn 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the cornmeal, buttermilk, baking soda, and salt.
Add the egg and melted lard, and stir until well combined.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

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.

Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,986 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal: Forms the bulk of the muffin and gives it its coarse, grainy structure.
Buttermilk: Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with the baking soda to help the muffins rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Egg: Binds the batter together and adds structure and richness.
Melted lard: Adds fat for tenderness and moisture, and helps the muffins brown.

“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.