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Bread

Bread Puffs

Bread puffs are fried pieces of wheat bread dough served with butter or hot cream seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat hot lard in a deep kettle.

  2. Pull up some of the dough quite thin with your thumb and two fingers, then cut the dough into pieces about 2-3 inches long.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop the pieces into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve warm with butter or in a vegetable dish with hot cream seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Wheat + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together984 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat bread dough
Forms the puffs; its gluten network traps steam so the pieces puff when fried.
Hot lard
Frying fat that cooks the dough quickly and gives it a crisp, golden browned surface.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the warm puffs at serving.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the dressing that the puffs are served in.

The step that matters

Drop the pieces into the hot lard and fry until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of puffing and crisping. Frying in hot fat quickly sets the outside while steam inside the dough expands it.

“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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