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Dessert

Tunbridge Puffs

Tunbridge Puffs are small fried batter cakes made from milk, flour, eggs, and cinnamon oil, served with pounded loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tunbridge Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make a thick batter.

  3. Add 3 well-beaten eggs and 2-3 drops of oil of cinnamon or other seasoning.

Shape and fry

  1. Dust a large flat plate with flour.

  2. Using a spoon, drop the batter onto the plate in the form of balls or fritters.

  3. Carefully drop the batter balls into boiling clarified dripping or lard.

Serve

  1. Serve the puffs with pounded loaf sugar sprinkled over the top.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, adding moisture and richness.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the thick batter together while frying.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it puff and set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Dropping the batter into the hot fat. The fat must be boiling so the batter sets quickly on contact; if it is too cool, the balls absorb grease and turn heavy and greasy instead of puffing.

“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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