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Dessert

Fried Rye Muffins

Fried rye muffins are small cakes made from rye meal, flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, egg, milk, and fried in hot fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Rye Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the rye meal, sugar, flour, salt, and baking soda thoroughly.

  2. Beat the egg and add the milk, then stir this mixture into the dry ingredients.

  3. Take a tablespoon of the batter and scrape it into the hot fat using a knife.

  4. Cook until the muffins do not stick when tested with a fork.

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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rye meal
Forms the main body of the batter and gives the muffins their earthy flavor.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds its shape while frying.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set its structure as it cooks.
Baking soda
Acts as a leavener that helps the muffins rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the dry ingredients into a workable batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Scraping the batter into the hot fat. The hot fat sets the outside of each muffin quickly. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter soaks up grease and turns heavy and greasy instead of crisp.

“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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