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Dessert

Excellent Light Puff

A fried puff pastry made with flour, lemon peel, nutmeg, brandy, sugar, eggs, lard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Excellent Light Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix flour, lemon peel, nutmeg, brandy, loaf sugar, and 1 egg in a bowl.

  2. Fry the mixture in a pan until cooked but not browned.

  3. Beat the cooked mixture with the 5 eggs in a mortar until well combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Drop 2 teaspoons of butter into the hot lard one at a time.

  3. Turn the puffs as they brown.

  4. Serve immediately with sweet 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Whites and yolks give the mixture lift and a light, airy structure when set by frying.
Flour
Gives the cooked mixture body so it holds its shape around the puffs.
Butter
Drops into the hot lard to add richness and flavour to the puffs.
Brandy
Adds aroma that carries the lemon and nutmeg flavours.

The step that matters

Drop the butter into the hot lard one at a time. If the lard is not hot enough, the puffs absorb fat and turn greasy rather than setting and browning quickly. Adding butter one piece at a time keeps the fat temperature steady so each puff cooks evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, nutmeg, brandy, sugar, egg, butter. 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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