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Dessert

Molly Puffs

A fried dough made from Indian meal, rye flour, eggs, brown sugar, and baking powder, served in boiling lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Molly Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the Indian meal and let it cool.

Make the batter

  1. Add the rye flour, eggs, brown sugar, and baking powder to the cooled meal.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard and fry until golden.

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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Rye + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Indian meal
Cornmeal gives the puffs their body and a coarse, slightly grainy texture.
Rye flour
Adds structure and a more robust, earthy flavour to the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the puffs.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the puffs rise and turn light.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the puffs brown deeply in the fat.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly and brown it. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up grease and the puffs turn heavy and oily instead of crisp and golden.

“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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