Skip to main content
Dessert

Fritters Souffles, with Vanilla

A sweet fried fritter soufflé flavored with vanilla, made from milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and butter.

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

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Fritters Souffles, with Vanilla

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux-style paste

  1. Infuse the vanilla in boiling milk and reduce to half, then remove the vanilla.

  2. Add butter to the milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in enough flour to form a soft paste and dry it on the fire for a few minutes.

  4. Transfer to another pot and mix in sugar, egg yolks, and salt.

Shape and fry

  1. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites and whipped cream to create a soft paste.

  2. Form the mixture into small balls or half-moons.

  3. Fry in hot oil until they swell and turn golden brown.

  4. Drain on a napkin and sprinkle with fine sugar before serving.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Clove + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

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

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Egg whites
Stiffly beaten whites trap air, helping the fritters swell and become light in the hot oil.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste while enriching its texture.
Flour
Forms the soft paste that gives the fritters their body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the milk-based paste, tenderizing the texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that is cooked with the flour into a paste.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Stiffly beaten egg whites hold the air that makes the fritters rise. Overmixing or deflating them makes the fritters dense and heavy instead of light and puffed when fried.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, vanilla, butter, flour, sugar, egg, 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 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes