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Dessert

To Make Curd Puffs

Curd puffs are baked pastries filled with a curd mixture of milk, butter, bread, nutmeg, lemon peel, wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Make Curd Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the curd

  1. Add a little rennet to the milk and let it break.

  2. Drain the curd in a coarse cloth.

Mix the batter

  1. Rub the curd through a fine sieve with the butter, bread, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Mix in the wine and sugar to taste.

Bake

  1. Grease cups with butter and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Bake for a little more than 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd that gives the puffs their body and dairy richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Bread
Adds body and soaks up liquid, helping the mixture hold its shape.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Rubbing the curd through a fine sieve. Pressing the curd through a fine sieve breaks up lumps and makes the mixture smooth, so the puffs bake evenly with a fine texture instead of a grainy one.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, bread, lemon, wine, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, bread, lemon, wine, sugar. 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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