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Dessert

Hasty Puffs

A quick, small puff cake made from flour, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, and flavored with lemon rind or nutmeg, topped with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Hasty Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, stir 4 tablespoons of flour into ½ pint of boiling milk until smooth.

  2. Add sugar and flavor with lemon rind or nutmeg.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add 2 tablespoons of butter and let cool.

  4. Once cool, mix in 2 beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter 4 small molds.

  2. Pour the mixture into the molds, filling each halfway.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until puffed and golden.

  4. Turn out the puffs.

  5. Top each puff with a little jam.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth batter that holds its shape.
Eggs
Set during baking and give the puffs their light, risen structure.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens with flour and gives moisture.

The step that matters

Let the batter cool before adding the eggs. If the mixture is still hot, the beaten eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly, and the batter may not rise evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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