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Dessert

Croquignoles

Croquignoles are fried dough pastries made from a batter of cream, eggs, sugar, flour, and baking powder, dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Croquignoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Whip the cream to a thick froth.

  2. Whip the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

  3. Mix the sugar into the yolks, then add the whipped cream and the egg whites.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the sifted flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until a soft paste forms.

  6. Roll out the paste and cut it into fanciful shapes.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the shapes in boiling lard until they turn light brown.

  2. Remove from the lard and place on a drainer to dry.

  3. While still hot, dust with fine white sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cream
Whipped cream adds air and richness, giving the dough a light, tender texture.
Eggs
Whipped yolks and whites add structure and lightness to the soft paste.
Flour
Forms the body of the paste that holds the shapes together during frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the paste, helping the shapes rise and become light.
White sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the fried shapes brown lightly.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to cook the shapes quickly. If it is too cool, the pieces absorb fat and turn greasy; if too hot, they brown before cooking through.

“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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