Skip to main content
Dessert

Puff Balls

A fried batter ball made with eggs, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, and fried in fat, served with maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Puff Balls

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puff Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and milk together.

  2. Add the sugar, flour, and baking powder to the mixture.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat in a deep pan.

  2. Drop a teaspoonful of batter into the hot fat, forming soft balls.

  3. Fry until they are a delicate brown.

  4. Serve with hot maple syrup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Whites whipped to stiff peaks give the balls a light, airy structure, while yolks enrich the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft balls together as they fry.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the balls rise and turn puffy in the hot fat.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface take on a delicate brown colour as it fries.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that makes the balls puff. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the balls turn out dense instead of light.

“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.

More puff balls recipes

Potato 5Coconut 3 See all 27 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes