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Tea Puffs

Tea puffs are small fried dough pieces dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Tea Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs until light.

  2. Mix the eggs into 1 pint of sifted flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Take a small piece of dough the size of a walnut and roll it as thin as possible.

  4. Fold the edges together twice and cut through in several places from edge to center.

  5. Press the dough between your fingers in the center to prevent separation.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat enough lard and butter in a fryer to nearly cover the dough.

  2. Fry the pieces until brown on one side, then turn and cook until light brown.

  3. Drain and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and bind the flour into a stiff, workable dough.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that puffs and crisps when fried.
Lard and butter
Fry medium that browns the surface and adds rich flavor.

The step that matters

Pressing the center of the dough. Pressing the center between your fingers keeps the cut dough joined so it does not separate in the hot fat. Rolling the piece very thin also helps it puff and crisp evenly.

“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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