Skip to main content
Dessert

Sugar Puffs

A sweet puff made from beaten egg whites, sugar, caraway seeds, and rosewater or lemon essence, baked until white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Caraway and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 270 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sugar Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meringue

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites to a strong froth.

  3. Gradually add the sugar until it forms a stiff paste.

  4. Mix in the caraway seeds and rosewater or lemon essence.

  5. Beat the mixture well for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Sift sugar onto a sheet of white paper.

  2. Drop the mixture onto the paper in sizes of a sixpence.

  3. Bake carefully until very white.

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. Caraway + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + carawaytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 into a foam that traps air and gives the puffs their light, airy structure.
Sugar
Stiffens the whipped whites into a paste and adds sweetness and a crisp finish when baked.
Caraway seeds
Add a distinct aromatic, slightly spiced flavour to the puffs.
Rosewater or lemon essence
Adds a floral or citrus aroma that flavours the mixture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well for 1 hour. Long beating keeps air bubbles finely dispersed in the stiff egg white foam. Under-beating leaves the mixture heavy and dense, while the sugar must be fully incorporated so the puffs bake into a crisp, light meringue rather than weeping or collapsing.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes