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Dessert

Puff Balls

A fried batter ball made with milk, lard, sugar, nutmeg, salt, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Puff Balls

Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puff Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, lard, sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot oil and fry until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + sugartop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds each ball together as it fries.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the balls puff and rise.
Milk
Adds liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter moisture.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Dropping batter into hot oil. Hot oil sets the outside quickly so the balls puff and brown rather than soaking up grease. If the oil is too cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns heavy and greasy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour. 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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