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Dessert

Raisin Puff

A steamed batter of sugar, milk, eggs, flour, raisins, baked in teacups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, milk, eggs, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add flour until the batter is thick enough to drop from a spoon.

  3. Stir in the chopped raisins.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill teacups half full with the batter.

  2. Steam in a pan for about 2 hours.

  3. Serve hot with sauce or cream.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the puddings rise and turn light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter's shape while it steams.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a soft, pourable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the puff.

The step that matters

Fill teacups half full with the batter. Baking powder keeps releasing gas as the puffs steam, so the batter needs room to rise. Filling past half can cause overflow and a dense, uneven texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, flour. 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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