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Dessert

German Puffs

A small sweet cake made with milk, eggs, flour, butter, nutmeg, topped with a sugared egg white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

German Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick 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. In a bowl, mix the milk, beaten eggs, flour, melted butter, and grated nutmeg until well combined, reserving the whites of 3 eggs for the sauce.

  3. Pour the mixture into well-buttered cups, filling them half full.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until puffed and golden.

  2. Beat the reserved egg whites with crushed sugar and add lemon juice or rose water to taste.

  3. Turn the baked puffs onto a dish and pour the sauce over them.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Eggs
Set and puff the batter, giving the puffs their structure as they bake.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the puffs hold their shape instead of collapsing.
Milk
Provides liquid that turns to steam in the oven, helping the puffs rise.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the puffs brown and taste savoury-sweet.

The step that matters

Bake until puffed and golden. The oven's heat turns the liquid in the batter to steam, which lifts the puffs. Underbaking leaves them soggy and prone to collapsing as they cool, so bake until they are firmly set and well coloured.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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