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Puff Balls

Fried dough balls made with eggs, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Puff Balls

Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puff Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add sugar, milk, salt, nutmeg, and baking powder; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown and puffed.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Beaten eggs add structure and help the dough hold its shape while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the hot fat, making the balls puff and turn light inside.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough that gives the puff balls their body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown in the hot fat.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour forms a workable dough.

The step that matters

Fry in properly boiling lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and dense instead of puffing and browning quickly on the outside.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, flour. 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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