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Dessert

Breakfast Vanities

Small squares of dough fried in boiling fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breakfast Vanities

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix and sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough milk or water to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into small squares.

Fry

  1. Drop the squares into boiling fat and fry until golden.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Pastry flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the squares puff and lighten as they fry.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so it binds into a stiff, workable dough.

The step that matters

Frying the squares in boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to seal the surface quickly. If it is too cool, the squares absorb excess oil and turn greasy instead of crisp and golden.

“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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