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Puff-balls

Puff Balls are slices of puffed grain fried or stewed with butter, eggs, cream, and milk, 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

Fry the puff-balls

  1. Pare the puff-balls and cut them into slices.

  2. Dust the slices with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

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

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

  5. Serve immediately on a heated dish.

Make A la Poulette

  1. For A la Poulette, cut puff-balls into dice and place in a saucepan with 1 tablespoon of butter per pint.

  2. Cover and stew gently for 15 minutes.

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

  4. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs, add ½ cup cream and ½ cup milk, then pour into the hot mixture.

  5. Shake until smoking hot, but do not allow to boil.

  6. Serve in a heated vegetable dish with toast on top.

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

Puff-balls
Main ingredient, cooked as slices or dice, providing the bulk of the dish.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the cream sauce, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the sauce and giving it a smooth mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, helping the puff-balls brown or soften gently in the pan.

The step that matters

Do not let the egg sauce boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the proteins scramble and the sauce turns grainy and curdled.

“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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