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Puff Balls

Puff Balls are small, thick batter dumplings cooked in boiling water and served hot with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Puff Balls

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puff Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir the softened butter until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, and sour cream; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is very thick.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling water.

  2. Cook until the puffs rise to the surface.

  3. Serve hot with melted butter poured 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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
Bind the batter and help the puffs hold their shape as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the batter and to the finished puffs.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, keeping the batter tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thick batter together while it cooks.

The step that matters

Keeping the batter very thick. A batter that is too thin will spread and fall apart in the boiling water instead of forming rounded puffs. Adding flour gradually lets you stop once the batter holds its shape when dropped from a spoon.

“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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