Name: Breakfast Puffs
Ingredients: 1 pint all-purpose flour; 2 teaspoons baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons lard (or butter); Milk (enough to make a stiff batter)

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Breakfast Puffs

Ingredients

1 pint all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard (or butter)
Milk (enough to make a stiff batter)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add the lard and mix until crumbly.
Gradually add milk until you achieve a stiff batter.

Bake

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into greased gem pans.
Bake until golden brown.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour: Forms the structure of the puffs as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, helping the puffs rise and become light.
Lard: Rubbed into the flour, it adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Milk: Hydrates the flour to form a stiff batter that holds its shape in the pans.

“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.