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A Variation on Belle Fritters

A variation of Belle fritters made with a batter of water, butter, flour, eggs, fried in lard, served with custard or vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Variation on Belle Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puffs

  1. In a saucepan, combine water and butter; bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in flour and cook until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan.

  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until smooth.

  4. Using a teaspoon, drop small pieces of the batter into hot lard and fry until golden.

Make the custard

  1. For custard, boil milk and sugar in a double boiler.

  2. Thicken with flour and one egg, stirring until smooth.

Fill the puffs

  1. Once puffs and custard are cool, cut the tops off the puffs and fill with custard.

Make the dumplings and bake

  1. Drop small pieces of batter into boiling sugared milk.

  2. Cook until they float.

  3. Serve dumplings with vanilla sauce.

  4. Layer boiled dumplings in a dish.

  5. Mix remaining milk with enough eggs to make custard, and flavor with vanilla.

  6. Pour over dumplings.

  7. Bake until set.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

All-purpose flour
Starch that thickens and sets with heat, giving the batter and custard their structure.
Eggs
Proteins set on heating, giving the puffs structure and the custard its body.
Butter
Fat that adds richness and tenderness to the cooked batter.
Milk
Liquid that forms the custard base and the sugared milk for the dumplings.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk and the dumplings.

The step that matters

Stir in flour and cook until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan.. Cooking the flour paste drives off excess water and gelatinizes the starch, so the paste can hold the eggs. If it is underdone, the batter stays wet, may spread, and puffs poorly.

“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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