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Preserve

To Cook Puff-balls

Puff balls are sliced, breaded, fried, or stewed with water, flour, milk or cream, 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-balls

  1. Remove the thin outer rind from the puff-balls and slice them.

  2. For stewing, cut the puff-balls into dice-shaped pieces.

Fry the slices

  1. Dip the slices in beaten egg and then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the coated slices in hot oil until golden brown.

Stew and serve

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

  2. Pour off the water, dust with flour, and add a small quantity of milk or cream, butter, pepper, salt, and parsley.

  3. Stew slowly for 5 minutes and 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-balls
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when sliced and stewed.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating to the slices so it adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot oil.
Flour
Dusted over the stewed pieces to help thicken the liquid into a sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stewed sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stewed dish.

The step that matters

Stew the pieces in a little water for 15 minutes. Using only a little water and keeping the heat gentle lets the puff-balls soften without becoming watery or breaking apart. Pouring off the water afterward removes excess liquid before the sauce is built.

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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