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Puff-balls

Puff Balls are slices or dice of puffed bread 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 slices

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

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

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

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

  5. Serve immediately on a heated dish.

Make A la Poulette

  1. For A la Poulette, cut the 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 of cream and ½ cup of milk to the beaten yolks.

  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 blocks of 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 bind with the cream and milk to thicken the mixture into a silky sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the puff-balls stew in the saucepan.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving the sauce a smoother, richer texture.
Milk
Thins the cream and egg mixture while adding gentle sweetness and softness.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture into the hot puff-ball mixture and shake until smoking hot, but do not allow to boil.. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but curdle and turn grainy if they boil. Keeping the mixture just below boiling keeps the sauce 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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