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Dessert

Currant Puffs

A steamed pastry made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and currants or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Currant Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk and eggs, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Fold in the currants or raisins.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into buttered cups.

  2. Steam for 1 to 2 hours.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps create a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, binding the batter as it sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the puffs together.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to make the puffs rise.
Currants or raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the puffs.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding dry ingredients slowly and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which helps the puffs stay light and tender rather than tough.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, cream, 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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