Skip to main content
Dessert

Sour Milk Muffins

Sour milk muffins are quick baked muffins made with sour milk, flour, eggs, butter, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Sour Milk Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a griddle and grease muffin rings.

  2. Separate the egg.

  3. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  4. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in 1 tablespoon lukewarm water.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolk and mix in melted butter, salt, and sour milk.

  2. Sift in the flour and beat until smooth.

  3. Mix the dissolved soda into the batter thoroughly.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg white and cook immediately as you would for plain muffins.

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. Butter + milktop 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

Egg
Yolk enriches the batter and the whipped white lightens it for a tender crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to produce gas for rising.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk, releasing carbon dioxide that lifts the muffins.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the muffins cook.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg white and cook immediately. Folding keeps the air in the whipped egg white, and the soda and acid gas starts as soon as they mix, so delaying the bake lets much of the lift escape.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes