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Dessert

Raisin Puffs

Steamed pastry with raisins, served with a lemon‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar, butter, and egg.

  2. Add the milk, flour, baking powder, salt, and chopped raisins; mix well.

Steam

  1. Steam in cups for 1 hour or in a basin for 40 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix sugar and cornstarch in a saucepan.

  2. Pour in boiling water and let it boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Add butter and the juice and rind of the lemon.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the bulk of the batter, giving the puffs their structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the puffs rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chew throughout the puffs.

The step that matters

Steam in cups for 1 hour or in a basin for 40 minutes.. Steaming must stay gentle and continuous so the batter cooks through and rises without becoming dense or soggy. Letting the water drop low or boil dry can leave the puffs underdone or heavy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, milk, flour, raisin, sauce. 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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