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Dessert

Beignet Souffle

A fried dough made from a milk, butter, sugar, lemon peel, flour, and egg batter, served with powdered sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Beignet Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, coarse sea salt, butter, sugar, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in flour mixed with a little cold milk to form a thick paste.

  3. Remove from heat and add the lightly beaten yolks and whites of the eggs.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 2 to 3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop walnut-sized pieces into hot lard and fry until golden.

  2. Serve dusted with powdered sugar and sliced lemon.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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
Forms the thick paste that gives the fried dough its body and structure.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough set and puff while frying.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives a tender interior.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried exterior brown.

The step that matters

Drop walnut-sized pieces into hot lard and fry until golden.. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs excess fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Frying in hot fat sets the outside quickly while the interior cooks through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, sugar, flour. 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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