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Dessert

Tunbridge Puffs

A puff made from milk, flour, eggs, and cinnamon, fried in clarified dripping or lard and served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tunbridge Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.

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

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

Fry and serve

  1. Dust a large flat plate with flour and drop spoonfuls of the batter onto it, forming balls or fritters.

  2. Carefully drop the fritters into boiling clarified dripping or lard.

  3. Serve warm, sprinkled with powdered sugar.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, giving the puffs their soft interior.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the puffs structure while they fry.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and puff as it cooks.

The step that matters

Dropping the fritters into the hot fat. The fat must be boiling hot when the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so the puffs hold their shape and do not absorb excess grease, while a cool pan makes them heavy and oily.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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