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Dessert

Curd Puffs

Curd puffs are fried pastries made from curd, eggs, sugar, rose water, nutmeg, and bread crumbs, served with a sweet wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curd Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curd

  1. Drain the curd from the milk.

  2. Add the egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, rose water, nutmeg, and bread crumbs to the curd. Mix until a paste forms.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the paste into desired shapes.

  2. Fry the shapes in boiling lard until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter for the sauce. Add sugar to the melted butter. Add white wine to the mixture and mix well.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Curd (in the method)
Forms the body of the puffs, giving them a soft, tender interior once bound into a paste.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste so it holds its shape.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the paste set when fried.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the paste enough body to hold its shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the shapes in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If the fat is too cool, the puffs soak up grease and turn heavy and oily before they set and colour.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, rose, bread, butter, sauce):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, rose, bread, butter, sauce. 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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