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Dessert

Cheese Puffs

A sweet cheese puff baked in puff pastry, flavored with orange flower water, nutmeg, cinnamon, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheese Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mash the cheese with a pestle and mortar.

  3. Mix in the well-beaten egg yolks and whites, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and orange flower water.

  4. Line patty tins with puff pastry.

Bake

  1. Place a little of the mixture in each tin, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and bake until golden.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Provides the main savoury flavour and body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the filling as it sets.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape in the tins.

The step that matters

Mixing the filling until well combined. Well-beaten eggs blended evenly with the mashed cheese give a smooth, uniform custard that sets consistently. Unevenly mixed eggs can leave streaks or pockets of unset egg in the puffs.

Swap the orange

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

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

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