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Dessert

Puff Cakes

Puff cakes are a light batter made with flour, milk, eggs, and baked in a preheated oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puff Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift flour and salt into a bowl.

  2. Gradually mix in milk until the batter reaches a cream-like consistency.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl until light, then add to the batter just before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease 3 gem pans well with lard and fill them almost to the top with batter.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately with butter.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the structure that the batter sets around as the cakes bake.
Eggs
Add structure and help the cakes rise and set as they bake.
Fresh milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid and pourable, cream-like consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs just before baking. Beaten eggs and flour batter lose gas and lift if left standing, so adding the eggs at the last moment helps the cakes rise in the oven.

“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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