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Dessert

Potato Corn-meal Muffins

A muffin made with mashed potatoes, cornmeal, fat, sugar, egg, milk, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato Corn-meal Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the fat, sugar, beaten egg, and milk.

  2. Add the mashed potatoes, corn meal, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased muffin tin.

Bake

  1. Bake for 40 minutes 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.

  1. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Bind the batter and add structure as the muffins set in the oven.
Corn meal
Gives the muffins their grainy texture and characteristic corn flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the muffins rise and become light.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and helps form the batter.
Fat
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the muffins brown.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a greased muffin tin. Greasing the tin keeps the muffins from sticking when they come out. Batter should be mixed just until combined, since overmixing develops gluten and can make the muffins tough.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, corn):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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