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Cheese Aigrettes

Cheese Aigrettes are fried dough discs mixed with cheese, pepper, salt, and cayenne, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Aigrettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Dry the flour in a cool oven, then sift it.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the cold water and butter to a boil.

  3. Add the flour and stir until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan clean.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then add the beaten eggs one at a time.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and cayenne, then mix in the grated cheese.

  6. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the frying fat until almost boiling.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot fat and fry until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper and serve hot, sprinkled with additional grated cheese.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Flour and butter 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 starch structure of the choux-style dough that puffs when fried.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set during frying.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough and helps it stay tender.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and browns on the outside of the fried aigrettes.

The step that matters

Frying at the right heat. If the fat is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of puffing and browning quickly. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks 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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