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Dessert

Cheese and Potato Puffs

Cheese and potato puffs are baked pastries made with mashed potatoes, cheese, herbs, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheese and Potato Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the cheese and mashed potatoes.

  2. Add salt, parsley, paprika, and the beaten egg yolk. Mix well.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake 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.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cheese + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together959 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cheese + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,507 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Adds rich flavor and helps the puffs set and brown as they bake.
Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, moist body of the puffs.
Egg
Binds the mixture, and the whipped white lifts it to give a light, puffed texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg white. That air is what makes the puffs rise and stay light, so deflating the mixture by overmixing leaves them dense.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, potato, egg):

  1. Dillfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, potato, 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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