Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Puffs

A sweet, lemon‑flavored puff made with sugar, lemon juice, zest, eggs, and beaten egg white, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the mixture

  1. Pass the sugar through a fine sieve, place it in a bowl with the lemon juice, and beat well together.

  2. Beat the egg white to a high froth and add it to the bowl.

  3. Beat for another 30 minutes.

  4. Add the whole eggs and grated lemon rinds to the mixture and mix well.

Bake

  1. Dust kitchen paper with sugar.

  2. Drop small amounts of the mixture onto it.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until puffs are set.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten mixture.
Egg white
Beaten to a high froth, it traps air that lifts the puffs.
Whole eggs
Add structure and richness so the puffs hold their shape when set.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and citrus flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds concentrated lemon aroma from the oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white to a high froth. The air whipped into the egg white is what makes the puffs rise and turn light. If the foam is underbeaten, the mixture stays dense and the puffs bake up flat and heavy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes