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Dessert

Indian Puffs

A sweet cornmeal custard baked in buttered cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Indian Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a pot, stir 8 tablespoons of cornmeal and 4 tablespoons of brown sugar into 1 quart of boiling milk.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then add 6 well-beaten eggs.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered cups and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk into a porridge-like base that gives the puffs body.
Eggs
Set during baking to give structure and help the puffs rise and hold their shape.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that cooks with the cornmeal into the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a mild molasses flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Stirring while boiling the milk. Cornmeal settles and scorches on the bottom of a pot if it is not stirred constantly, and it can clump before it thickens 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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