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Dessert

Dessert Puffs

A light, airy puff made from sweet milk, flour, and beaten eggs, baked until set and served with a liquid sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dessert Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk and flour.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

Fold and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the mixture.

  3. Pour the batter into cups and bake until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with a liquid sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites add air that helps the puffs rise.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the baked puffs their set structure.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the puffs moist.

The step that matters

Gently fold the egg whites into the mixture. Whites hold air only while they are stiff. Stirring hard deflates them, so the puffs bake flatter and denser instead of rising.

“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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