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Dessert

Steamed Blueberry PufTs

A steamed batter of eggs, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, and blueberries folded into cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Steamed Blueberry PufTs

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light and thick without separating them.

  2. Add the sugar and milk to the eggs and mix well.

  3. Sift together the baking powder, salt, and flour.

  4. Stir the sifted dry ingredients into the liquid ingredients.

Steam and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into buttered cups.

  2. Steam the cups for half an hour.

  3. Serve hot with cream and sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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
Beaten to trap air, giving the puffs their light, airy structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the puffs rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the puffs together as they set.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Blueberries
Add pockets of fruit and juicy sweetness throughout the puffs.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the liquid. Mixing gently, just until combined, keeps the batter light. Overworking develops gluten in the flour, which makes the puffs tough and dense.

“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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