Skip to main content
Dessert

Beignets Soufflés Ou Pets De Nonne

A puffed pastry made from a choux-like dough, fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Beignets Soufflés Ou Pets De Nonne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, sugar, lemon zest (or orange flower water), butter, and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture until it begins to simmer.

  3. Add flour gradually, stirring to form a dough similar to choux pastry.

  4. Remove from heat and incorporate eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough into moderately heated oil.

  2. Fry until the beignets puff up and turn golden brown, turning them as needed.

  3. Drain on a clean cloth, dust with sugar, and serve arranged on a folded napkin.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Add structure and help the dough puff and set as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starch and gluten framework that gives the dough its body.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Water
Provides the moisture that turns to steam and drives the puffing.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully mixed in before the next is added, so the dough becomes smooth and glossy. Adding eggs too quickly can leave the dough too loose or curdled to hold its shape and puff in the hot oil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes