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Dessert

Lemon Puffs

A sweet pastry made with sugar, lemon juice, egg whites, grated lemon rind, and eggs, baked on wafer paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the mixture

  1. Combine sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and beat together.

  2. Whisk egg white until very frothy, then add to mixture and whisk for 20 minutes.

  3. Add grated lemon rind and 3 eggs, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Sift sugar over wafer paper, drop small quantities of mixture onto it, and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and give the puffs structure as they set in the oven.
Egg white
Whisked until frothy, it traps air that lightens the mixture and helps the puffs rise.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the puffs and helps form a crisp, lightly browned surface when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that balances the sweetness.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon oil for fragrance without adding much liquid.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg white and sugar mixture. Egg white must be whisked until very frothy so it traps air. Under-whisking gives dense puffs that do not rise, while the air bubbles expand in the oven to lighten the texture.

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.

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