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Breakfast Puffs

A quick fried dough made from sour milk, baking soda, salt, egg, and flour, shaped into strips and fried in lard or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Breakfast Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sour milk, baking soda, salt, and egg.

  2. Add flour until the mixture can be rolled out like biscuit dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut it into strips, 1 inch wide and 3 inches long.

Fry

  1. Fry the strips in hot lard until brown, like doughnuts.

  2. Alternatively, fry in a skillet with 1 ounce each of lard and butter, turning to brown all sides.

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 + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Sour milk
Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the puffs rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas, leavening the dough.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the dough.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure so it can be rolled and cut into strips.

The step that matters

Frying the strips in hot fat. Fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the strips absorb grease and turn heavy and oily instead of puffing and browning.

“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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