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Dessert

Dutch Puffs

A light, lemon-flavored cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, egg yolks, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dutch Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat together the sugar and butter until creamy.

  2. Add the flour and the beaten egg yolks, mixing continuously to keep the batter light.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and grated rind, followed by the baking powder.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into round molds and bake until golden.

  2. Serve warm with a hot sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, creaming with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy structure to the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while adding moisture and colour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the puffs together as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the puffs rise and become light.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that makes the puffs rise. Folding gently keeps that air in, while vigorous stirring deflates the batter and produces dense, flat puffs.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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