Skip to main content
Dessert

Spanish Puffs

A puff pastry made with water, butter, flour, egg yolks, egg whites, fried in clarified dripping or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine water and butter; stir until boiling.

  2. Add flour and mix well.

  3. Incorporate egg yolks two at a time, followed by egg whites.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls into boiling clarified dripping or lard to fry until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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
Starch that thickens the water and butter into a paste that holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help the dough emulsify and stay tender.
Egg whites
Trap steam as the dough fries, helping the puffs expand and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and keeps the dough tender.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into boiling clarified dripping or lard to fry until golden brown.. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the dough absorbs grease and turns heavy instead of puffing.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes