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Dessert

Nannies Puffs

A fried puff made from a butter, flour, and egg batter, served with sugar.

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 ↓

Nannies Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine water and butter; bring to a boil.

  2. Mix in flour and stir well.

  3. Add beaten egg yolks, then fold in egg whites.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls into boiling lard and fry until light brown.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar while hot or serve with a 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. Flour + sugartop 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 + eggtop 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).

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, helping the dough taste tender and flavorful.
Flour
Thickens the boiled water and butter into a paste that holds the puffs together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the dough, giving a tender interior.
Egg whites
Folded in to add air and lift, helping the puffs rise and stay light.
Lard
Hot fat that cooks the dough quickly, producing a crisp, golden browned exterior.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until light brown. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the dough absorbs grease and turns heavy and greasy instead of puffing and crisping.

“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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