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Puff-balls

Puff Balls are sliced, fried or stewed, then served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Puff-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Ensure puff-balls are perfectly white throughout.

  2. Pare off the skin and cut into slices.

  3. Dust with salt and pepper.

  4. Heat enough oil in a large, shallow pan to cover the bottom.

  5. Fry the slices until brown on one side, then turn and brown the other side.

  6. Serve immediately on a heated dish.

A la Poalette variation

  1. For the A la Poalette variation, cut puff-balls into slices and then into dice.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter for each pint of puff-ball blocks.

  3. Cover and stew gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Lift the lid, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of salt and a dash of pepper.

  5. Beat 3 egg yolks until light, then mix in ½ cup of cream and ½ cup of milk.

  6. Pour this into the hot mixture and shake until smoking hot, but do not boil.

  7. Serve in a heated vegetable dish, topped with blocks of toast.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and milk into a smooth, rich sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the puff-balls while they stew.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the egg-thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture in and do not boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; boiling the mixture can curdle the eggs and leave the sauce grainy and thin rather than smooth.

“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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