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Dessert

Puffs or Pop Overs

A quick batter of milk, flour, eggs, and salt baked in a hot oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puffs or Pop Overs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat two eggs separately.

  2. Add one teaspoon salt.

  3. Mix salt with flour.

  4. Mix the beaten yolks.

  5. Add milk slowly to the mixture to make smooth batter.

  6. Fold in the beaten whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour batter into hot greased gem tins, filling them half full.

  2. Bake in a hot oven for up to thirty minutes.

  3. Serve immediately.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

682Calories
27 gProtein
14 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Whites trapped by folding give the puffs their light, hollow lift as they bake.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter's shape as it sets in the oven.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture that turns to steam.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten whites. Folding keeps the air in the beaten whites intact. Stirring them in hard deflates the batter, and the puffs then rise less and bake up denser.

“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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