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Corn Meal Puffs

A baked cornmeal puff made with milk, corn flour, wheat flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Meal Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Stir in the corn flour, wheat flour, and salt.

  3. Boil for fifteen minutes, stirring well from the bottom.

  4. Add the butter.

  5. Beat hard in a bowl for three minutes.

  6. Add the whipped eggs and sugar.

  7. Add the seasoning and baking soda.

  8. Whip well.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in buttered cups in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Serve with pudding sauce or butter.

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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the puffs rise and hold their shape when baked.
Corn flour
Provides the main body of the batter and a tender, slightly grainy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas, lifting the batter as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flours cook into a thick, set batter.

The step that matters

Beat hard for three minutes. Vigorous beating traps air and develops the batter's structure, which helps the puffs rise in the oven. Under-beating can leave them dense and flat.

“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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