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Dessert

Cheese Puffs

Cheese Puffs are small baked cakes made from cheese curd, eggs, flour, orange flower water, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,746 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheese Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the cheese curd with 1 whole egg and 1 yolk until smooth.

  2. Add the flour, orange flower water, grated nutmeg, and sugar, then mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Form the mixture into very small round cakes.

  2. Place the cakes on a tin plate and bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve with pudding sauce.

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. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cheese curd
Forms the main body of the puffs, giving them a soft, creamy interior.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it bakes, giving the cakes structure.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the mixture so the small cakes hold their shape in the oven.

The step that matters

Beating the curd smooth. Curd strained very fine and beaten until smooth gives an even batter. Lumps left in the curd would bake unevenly and leave a grainy texture in the finished puffs.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, flour, nutmeg, sugar. 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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