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Dessert

Chocolate Puffs

A sweet treat made from sugar, chocolate, and egg white, baked into small puffed pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the paste

  1. Mix the sifted sugar and finely scraped chocolate together.

  2. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  3. Stir the stiff egg white into the chocolate and sugar mixture.

  4. Continue beating until you have a stiff paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Sugar a baking paper.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the paper.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the puffs and helps give the paste its body.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and firms the paste as it sets.
Egg white
Whipped to stiffness, it lightens the paste and helps the puffs rise and set.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until stiff. Whipped egg white traps air in its protein network, which gives the puffs their lift. If the whites are under-whipped or deflated when stirred in, the mixture stays dense and the puffs spread flat.

“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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