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Dessert

Strawberry Puffs

Steamed dough balls filled with strawberries, served with a sweet strawberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingers.

  2. Add salt and baking powder, then stir in enough sweet milk to make a soft dough.

  3. Roll the dough out to about ½ inch thick and cut into squares.

  4. Place 3-4 strawberries in each square, cover with dough, and roll into a ball.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Steam the balls for 15 minutes.

  2. For the sauce, stir the butter until soft and creamy, then add powdered sugar and beat well.

  3. Incorporate the mashed strawberries one at a time.

  4. Chill the sauce on ice until ready to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the strawberries.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the dough rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough, and creams with sugar to form the sauce.
Strawberries
Provide flavour and moisture inside the dough and in the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.

The step that matters

Steaming the balls. Steam must be kept steady for the full 15 minutes; the dough needs sustained heat for the baking powder to expand and set, so the puffs stay light rather than dense or soggy.

“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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