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Dessert

Beignets

Beignets are deep‑fried dough fritters made from milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, and flavored with salt and optional flavoring, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beignets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs, separating the whites and yolks.

  2. Sift the salt and baking powder with the flour.

  3. Stir the yolks and milk into the flour; add flavoring to taste.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop by the teaspoonful into deep boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden-brown, then remove with a skimmer to drain on brown paper.

  3. Once dry, sift powdered sugar over the fritters and serve in a pyramid on cut paper.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it so the fritters puff and stay tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets around the air and steam as the fritters fry.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters rise and become light.
New milk
Adds moisture and richness, hydrating the flour into a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Whipped whites hold air that makes the beignets light. Vigorous stirring deflates them, so the fritters turn out dense instead of puffed.

“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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