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Dessert

Hasty Puffs

A quick puff pastry-like dessert made from flour, milk, butter, eggs, flavored with lemon rind or nutmeg, topped with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Hasty Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Quickly stir the flour into the boiling milk that has been sweetened and flavored with lemon rind or nutmeg.

  2. Boil the mixture, then add the butter and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, mix in the beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter four small molds and pour a quarter of the mixture into each.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Turn out before serving and place a little jam on top of each puff.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Starch that thickens the boiling milk into a paste that holds the puffs together.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift as they set in the oven, letting the puffs rise and hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and moisture to the batter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set into.

The step that matters

Quickly stir the flour into the boiling milk. Adding flour all at once and stirring fast prevents lumps. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid so its starch swells and thickens smoothly, which gives the batter body.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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