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Dessert

Beignets De Praises

Fried dough fritters studded with strawberries, served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Beignets De Praises

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the oil, lemon peel, and flour together.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks and add enough white wine to achieve a very thick cream consistency.

  3. At the last moment, fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

  4. Remove the stems from the strawberries and drop them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a kettle to at least 2 inches deep until boiling.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the boiling lard, allowing 1 strawberry per fritter.

  3. Fry until golden brown.

  4. Remove with a skimmer and place on brown paper in the oven.

  5. Sift sugar over them 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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Flour + white winetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 whites, folded in whipped, lighten it and help it puff when fried.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the thick batter together around the strawberry.
White wine, rum, or brandy
Thins the batter to a thick cream and adds aroma, while alcohol evaporates quickly in hot fat.
Salad oil
Adds fat that keeps the fritters tender and helps the batter coat the fruit.
Strawberries
Provide moisture and sweet, fruity flavour inside each fritter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites must be stiff and added at the last moment, because deflating them by overmixing or letting the batter sit loses the air that makes the fritters light.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, white wine):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, white wine. 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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