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Dessert

Beignet Soufeles

A fried dough pastry made with butter, flour, eggs, water, and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Beignet Soufeles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux paste

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir the flour smoothly into the melted butter.

  3. Gradually add the water and boil for two minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition.

Fry and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag fitted with a large plain tube.

  2. Pipe short lengths of the mixture into hot fat and fry for about eight minutes.

  3. Sprinkle with fine sugar and serve hot.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Flour
Starch that thickens the water and butter into a paste that holds its shape.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help the paste puff as steam expands it.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the paste and adding flavour.
Water
Turns to steam during cooking, helping the paste puff and become hollow.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs must be beaten in one at a time, fully incorporating each before the next. This keeps the paste smooth and glossy and able to trap steam, so the beignets puff rather than stay dense.

“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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