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Dessert

Curd Puffs

Curd puffs are fried curd shapes served with a sweet wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curd Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puffs

  1. Drain the curd from the milk well.

  2. In a bowl, combine the curd, egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, rosewater, nutmeg, and bread crumbs. Mix until it forms a paste.

  3. Cut the paste into desired shapes.

  4. Fry the shapes in boiling lard until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then add sugar and white wine to make the sauce.

  2. Serve the curd puffs with the sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Curd (in the method)
Forms the body of the puffs, giving them a soft, tender interior.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste so it holds its shape.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the puffs rise and set when fried.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the paste enough body to be cut and shaped.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fat-based body to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be fully hot before the shapes go in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it, while cooler fat lets the puffs soak up grease and turn heavy and greasy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, bread, butter, white wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, bread, butter, white wine. 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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