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To Cook Puff-balls

A dish of puff-balls fried or stewed with bread crumbs, flour, milk, butter, pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Cook Puff-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puff-ball

  1. Remove the thin outer rind from the puff-ball.

  2. Slice the puff-ball.

Fry the slices

  1. Dip the slices in beaten egg.

  2. Coat the slices with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Make the stew

  1. Cut the puff-ball into dice-shaped pieces for stewing.

  2. Stew the pieces in a little water for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour off the water.

  4. Dust the pieces with flour.

  5. Add milk or cream, butter, pepper, salt, and parsley.

  6. Stew slowly for 5 minutes.

  7. Serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Puff-ball
Forms the bulk of the dish, becoming tender as it stews.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the slices while frying.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden browned coating on the fried slices.
Flour
Dusted on the pieces to help thicken the stew liquid.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Stew the pieces in a little water for 15 minutes. Puff-ball is mild and watery, and it needs gentle, sufficient cooking to become tender. Pouring off the water afterward removes liquid that would otherwise dilute the sauce made with flour and milk.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, flour, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, flour, milk, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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