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Puff Balls

A light, stiff batter dumpling dropped into boiling soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Puff Balls

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 ↓

Puff Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Mix in the milk, salt, melted butter, cayenne, sugar, and baking powder.

  3. Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

Cook in soup

  1. Drop teaspoonfuls of the batter into boiling soup.

  2. Cover tightly and boil for 10 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the puff balls their light, airy structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter balls swell and rise.
Flour
Gives the stiff batter body so each ball holds its shape while cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the crumb and carrying flavor.
Milk
Moistens the batter and helps bind it to a workable consistency.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and boil for 10 minutes. Keeping the lid on traps steam so the balls puff and cook through. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, which can stop them rising and leave them 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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