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Dessert

Cheese Puffs

A small baked pastry made from butter, water, flour, cheese, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add the water and bring to a boil.

  3. Gradually sift in the flour and cheese, seasoning to taste.

  4. Stir until the mixture leaves the saucepan, then remove from heat.

  5. Let it cool, then stir in the beaten egg and set aside until completely cold.

Bake

  1. Shape the mixture into balls and place them in a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Melts into the water to form a liquid base that gives the puffs richness.
Self-raising flour
Forms the structure of the dough and, with its raising agent, helps the puffs rise in the oven.
Egg
Binds the dough and sets during baking to hold the puffs together.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, and browns slightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture leaves the saucepan. Cooking the flour paste until it pulls away from the pan drives off moisture and gelatinises the starch. This gives a dough stiff enough to hold its shape and rise well, rather than spreading flat.

“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.

More cheese puff recipes

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