Skip to main content
Main

Puff-balls

A dish of puff balls fried or stewed with butter, eggs, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 slices

  1. Ensure puff-balls are perfectly white.

  2. Pare off the skin and cut into slices.

  3. Dust with coarse sea salt and black 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.

Make A la Poulette

  1. For A la Poulette, cut puff-balls into dice.

  2. In a saucepan, add 1 tablespoon of butter for each pint of puff-balls.

  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 the yolks of 3 eggs until light, then add ½ cup cream and ½ cup milk.

  6. Pour the egg mixture into the hot puff-ball mixture and shake until smoking hot, but do not allow to boil.

  7. 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the cream and milk into a smooth, rich sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the puff-balls soften gently while they stew.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but curdle if they boil. Keep the pan hot enough to warm the sauce through, but do not let it boil, so it stays 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.

More puff balls recipes

Potato 5Coconut 3 See all 27 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes