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Dessert

Corn Puffs

A batter of mashed potatoes, milk, eggs, and cornmeal baked into puffs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Corn Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Rub the cold mashed potatoes and milk through a colander to remove lumps.

  2. Add the egg yolk and stir in the corn meal slowly, beating well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white to stiff peaks and fold it into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately in heated gem irons.

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. Potato + milktop 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Beaten to stiff peaks and folded in, it traps air that lifts the puffs as they bake.
Cold mashed potatoes
Add body and moisture to the batter, giving the puffs a tender, soft crumb.
Corn meal
Provides the main structure and the corn flavour of the puffs.
Egg yolk
Enriches the batter and helps bind the corn meal into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white. Whipped egg white holds air that expands in the oven. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, so the puffs rise instead of turning dense.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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