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Dessert

Nice Puffs

A sweet puff made from butter, flour, milk, eggs, currants, lemon peel, sugar, and orange-flower water, fried in lard and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Nice Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter in a quart stew-pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir for five minutes.

  3. Gradually stir in the boiling milk until well combined.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the eggs, salt, nutmeg, currants, lemon peel, sugar, and orange-flower water.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the dough into walnut-sized balls.

  2. Fry the balls in hot lard until they burst.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar and serve with wine 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Starch that thickens the milk and gives the dough enough structure to hold its shape.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift, so the balls puff and set as they fry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the dough and carrying flavour.
Boiling milk
Gelatinises the flour and adds moisture, forming a smooth choux-style dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown as the balls fry.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in hot lard until they burst. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and dense instead of puffing. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so steam expands the centre and the balls burst open.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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