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Dessert

Molly Puffs

Molly Puffs are fried dough pieces made from Indian meal, rye meal, eggs, brown sugar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Molly Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the Indian meal and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, add the rye meal, eggs, brown sugar, and baking soda.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard and fry until golden.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Rye + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Rye + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Scalded first, it thickens the batter and gives the puffs their body.
Rye meal
Adds structure and a earthy flavor to the batter once mixed with the cooled Indian meal.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the puffs hold their shape while frying.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and puff when fried.

The step that matters

Let the scalded Indian meal cool fully before adding the rest. Adding eggs and baking soda to hot cornmeal can cook the eggs unevenly and cause the leavening to react too fast, so the batter may not puff evenly.

“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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