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Dessert

Puffs

A fried dough made with buttermilk, egg, baking soda, and salt, served with maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and maple syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix buttermilk, egg, baking soda, and salt until combined.

  2. Roll the mixture out thinly and cut into small strips or squares.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat hot lard in a pan.

  2. Drop the cut pieces into the hot lard and fry until golden.

  3. Serve with maple syrup.

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. Egg + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Buttermilk + maple syruptop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together125 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Provides moisture and a tangy flavour that keeps the puffs tender.
Egg
Binds the mixture and gives it structure as it sets in the hot fat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas, helping the pieces rise and puff.
Lard
Fries the pieces, transferring heat quickly to brown the outside and add richness.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. The lard must be hot before the pieces go in. Hot fat sets and browns the surface quickly, which helps the puffs rise and limits how much grease they absorb. Cool fat makes them soggy and greasy.

“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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