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Dessert

Beignets De Fraises

A batter of eggs, thickened cream, sugar, and cinnamon coated strawberries fried in lard and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beignets De Fraises

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the beaten eggs, thickened cream, sugar, and cinnamon.

  2. Add the raw strawberries to the batter, coating them well.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the hot lard in a frying pan.

  2. Fry spoonfuls of the batter-coated strawberries in the hot lard until golden.

  3. Arrange the fried strawberries in a pyramid on a serving dish and sift sugar between and over them.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Bind the batter and help the coating set and turn golden when fried.
Thickened cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the batter a soft, tender interior.
Fresh strawberries
Provide the fruit filling, softening and releasing juice as they cook in the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry spoonfuls of the batter-coated strawberries until golden. The lard must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy while the strawberries release juice and the beignets fall apart.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Cinnamonthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

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