Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Puffs

A light, sweet batter of shortening, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, and lemon juice baked into golden puff pastries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lemon Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the shortening and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the lemon juice to the creamed mixture.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into muffin pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Shortening
Creates a tender, fine texture by trapping air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps cream with the fat to hold air for lightness.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture and help bind the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the puffs as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the puffs rise.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add airiness and lift to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the puffs dense and less light after baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes