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Dessert

Beignets a L'italien

A fried dough made with rice, milk, sugar, orange flower water, lemon peel, eggs, currants, and apples, served with sugar or a butter‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Beignets a L'italien

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the rice in milk until very tender.

  2. Add sugar, orange flower water, grated lemon peel, salt, flour, eggs, currants, and pureed apples. Mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Butter a baking sheet and drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto it, forming pieces the size of a large nutmeg.

  2. Heat the lard until boiling.

  3. Carefully place the baking sheet in the boiling lard.

  4. Fry until the beignets are light in color.

  5. Drain the beignets.

  6. Serve with sifted sugar on top.

Boil and serve with sauce

  1. Boil pieces the size of a walnut in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the boiled pieces.

  3. Serve with a sauce made from butter, sugar, and white wine.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rice
Cooked soft in milk, it thickens the mixture and gives the beignets their body.
Eggs
They bind the batter and help set the pieces so they hold their shape.
Flour
It adds structure so the mixture holds together when dropped and fried.
Apples
Pureed apples add moisture and gentle sweetness to the batter.
Lard
As the boiling frying fat, it cooks the outside quickly and browns the beignets.

The step that matters

Carefully place the baking sheet in the boiling lard. The batter is soft and loose, so rough handling can splash hot fat or break the pieces. Lowering them gently into hot fat lets a crust set quickly, which helps them keep their shape.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, orange, lemon, flour, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, orange, lemon, 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.

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