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Dessert

Beignets D’une Autre Façon

A batter-based fried doughnut made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, baking soda, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 D’une Autre Façon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the eggs and sugar, and mix well.

  2. Add the melted butter and stir until combined.

  3. Mix in the baking soda and water.

  4. Gradually add flour until the batter is slightly thicker than pancake batter.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown, then remove and drain on paper towels.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 richness to the batter as they set during frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together once fried.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the batter so the beignets puff and stay light.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Oil that is too cool lets the batter soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks. Watching the colour and draining well keeps the texture light.

“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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