Skip to main content
Dessert

French Puffs

A fried dough made from a quick batter of water, butter, flour, eggs, and flavored with rose or orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a pot, bring 1 pint of water to a boil.

  2. Add butter and a pinch of salt.

  3. Stir in enough flour to thicken to a hasty pudding consistency.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

  5. Once cool, beat in 2 eggs.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of batter into a frying pan with hot fat or lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown and pile on a dish.

  3. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and a little rose or orange-flower water.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the boiled water and butter into a stiff batter that holds its shape when dropped.
Eggs
Enrich the cooled batter and help it puff and set as it fries.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the boiled base of the batter.
Fat or lard
Fries the batter spoonfuls, creating a crisp golden surface through browning.

The step that matters

Let the batter cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to a very hot starch paste can scramble or cook unevenly instead of blending smoothly. Cooling first lets the eggs emulsify into the batter, which helps the puffs rise and stay tender.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, sugar, rose. 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

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