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Dessert

Raisin Puff

A steamed pastry made with butter, eggs, flour, milk, sugar, baking powder, raisins, cherries, and ground almonds or walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter twelve ½‑pound baking powder tins and their covers.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

Make the batter

  1. Add the eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, raisins, cherries, and ground nuts to the mixture and mix lightly.

  2. Pour the batter into the prepared tins.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the tins in a steamer and steam for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with hard sauce and whipped cream.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the puff as the batter sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the puddings rise and lighten.
Sweet milk
Moistens the batter and helps it hydrate the flour.

The step that matters

Mix lightly. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, and overmixing makes the puffs tough and dense. Stir only until the ingredients are combined, and keep the leavening active by getting the batter into the tins promptly.

“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 raisin puff recipes

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