Skip to main content
Dessert

Spanish Puffs

Spanish Puffs are fried dough balls filled with marshmallow and whipped cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spanish Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine the butter and hot water in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Once boiling, sift in the flour while stirring briskly until the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the pan, about 1 minute.

  3. Remove the dough from heat and let the dough cool.

  4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 5 minutes after each addition.

Fry the puffs

  1. Heat the fat to a temperature slightly lower than for frying doughnuts.

  2. Drop tablespoonfuls of dough into the hot fat.

  3. Cook slowly for about 15 minutes until puffed and golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. Cut marshmallows into small pieces.

  2. Fold the marshmallow pieces into the whipped cream with powdered sugar, pecans, and vanilla.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pecans + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,691 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 to the dough, helping it stay tender.
Flour
Forms the starch structure that holds the dough together and sets as it cooks.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure, and help the dough puff and set as it cooks.
Marshmallows
Melt slightly and add sweetness and chewy texture to the cream filling.
Double cream
Whipped to add airy richness and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs. Each egg must be fully incorporated before the next is added, so the dough becomes smooth and glossy enough to hold its shape and puff in the hot fat instead of collapsing or staying dense.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, sugar, vanilla, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, sugar, vanilla, cream. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes