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Dessert

Breakfast Puffs

A quick oven-baked batter of flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, milk, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Breakfast Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt into a bowl.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and add it to the milk.

  2. Stir the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until smooth.

  3. Add the melted butter and beat again until well combined.

Bake

  1. Fill a buttered gem pan about two-thirds full with the batter.

  2. Bake for about 15 minutes.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the puffs together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the puffs rise and turn light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness as its proteins set during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Fill the pan about two-thirds full. Overfilling can cause batter to spill over and stop the puffs rising evenly, while underfilling gives small, dense results. Two-thirds leaves room for the batter to expand in the oven.

“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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