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Dessert

Raisin Puffs

A steamed pastry made with eggs, butter, flour, milk, raisins, sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and mix in the butter until smooth.

  2. Add the flour, milk, raisins, sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda; mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into small cups.

  2. Steam for half an hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the puffs once the batter sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lift the puffs.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas and make the puffs rise.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the puffs.

The step that matters

Steam for half an hour. The leavening reaction between cream of tartar and baking soda starts as soon as the batter is mixed, so the cups should go into steam promptly. Keeping the steam steady lets the puffs rise and set rather than sink or turn dense.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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