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Dessert

Rice Puffs

A batter of flour, salt, water or milk, eggs, and lard is fried into golden brown puffed cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Add enough boiling water or milk to create a batter.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then beat in the eggs until well combined.

Fry and serve

  1. In a pan, heat the lard or cooking fat until boiling hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat and fry until golden brown.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter that puffs and sets as it fries.
Large eggs
Bind the batter and add richness, helping the puffs rise and hold their shape.
Lard or cooking fat
Conducts heat to the batter and gives the puffs a crisp, golden browned exterior.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until boiling hot before frying. Hot fat sets the outside of each batter spoonful quickly, so it puffs and browns rather than soaking up fat and turning greasy or dense.

“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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