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Bread

Bread Puffs

Bread puffs are fried pieces of wheat bread dough served warm with hot cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Bread Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the dough

  1. Heat hot lard in a deep kettle.

  2. Using your thumb and two fingers, pull up some dough thinly and cut into 2-3 inch pieces.

  3. Drop the pieces into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve warm like biscuits, or in a vegetable dish with hot cream seasoned with salt and pepper.

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. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Wheat + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together984 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wheat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Wheat bread dough
Fries into a crisp, golden shell around a soft, airy interior.
Hot lard
Conducts heat quickly and fries the dough, giving it browning and a rich flavor.
Cream
Serves as a warm, rich sauce to pair with the fried puffs.

The step that matters

Dropping the dough into the hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of puffing and browning. Keeping the lard hot lets moisture in the dough turn to steam quickly, which inflates the pieces and sets a crisp surface.

“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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