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Puff Balls, Saute

Sautéed puff balls seasoned with salt and pepper, lightly floured and fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,263 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Puff Balls, Saute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the puff balls and peel them.

  2. Cut the puff balls into crosswise slices about ½ inch thick.

  3. Dust the slices with salt and pepper.

Sauté and serve

  1. Heat enough olive oil, corn oil, or bacon drippings in a sauté pan to cover the bottom.

  2. Dip each slice in flour, then place in the hot fat.

  3. Brown quickly on each side and serve very hot.

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. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + olivetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff balls
Form the main body of the dish, cooking down into a tender, mild-flavored slice.
Flour
Forms a light coating that browns in the hot fat and helps create a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Brown quickly in hot fat. The fat must be hot before the floured slices go in. Hot fat sears the coating fast, producing browning and a crisp crust, while slow heating lets the slices soak up oil and turn greasy.

“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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