Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Puffs

A dessert of strawberries in cups topped with a light, flaky batter, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Strawberry Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Fill a deep pan halfway with boiling water and cover it.

  2. In cups, place strawberries, 2 teaspoons of butter, sugar to taste, and 1 tablespoon of water.

  3. Put the cups in the boiling water and cover to keep the steam in.

Make the batter

  1. Sift together ¾ cup of flour and 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar.

  2. Rub in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  3. Beat 1 egg until light, then mix in ½ cup of milk. Pour the egg mixture over the dry ingredients and beat hard for 1 minute.

Steam and serve

  1. Remove the lid from the pan and drop spoonfuls of batter into the cups on top of the fruit.

  2. Replace the lid and cook undisturbed for 20 minutes until light and flaky.

  3. Turn out into individual dishes and serve with whipped cream.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the structure of the batter that puffs and sets as it steams.
Egg
Adds structure and lift, helping the batter set light and tender.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and creates a smooth batter that steams into a soft texture.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Strawberries
Provide fruit flavor and moisture that softens beneath the batter as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on during steaming. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the batter cools and may not rise or turn light and flaky. Keeping the steam sealed in cooks the batter 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes