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Breakfast

Breakfast Puffs

A quick fried dough snack made with sour milk, baking soda, and lard.

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. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll out.

  3. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into strips, 1 inch wide and 3 inches long.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan over medium‑high heat.

  2. Fry the strips until golden brown on all sides.

  3. Serve hot, excellent with coffee.

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
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, lifting the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the puffs rise.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness to the puffs.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the dough its body for rolling and cutting.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning on the outside of the puffs.

The step that matters

Fry the strips until golden brown on all sides. The frying pan must be hot enough to brown the surface quickly. If the heat is too low, the puffs absorb fat and turn greasy before they set and brown.

“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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