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Beignets of Spinach

A fried dough cake made with spinach, eggs, sugar, butter, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beignets of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, melted butter, and sugar.

  2. Add the chopped spinach and bread crumbs to the mixture.

Form and fry

  1. Form the mixture into round cakes.

  2. Heat butter in a pan and fry the cakes until golden brown on both sides.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness to the cakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the cakes body so they hold their shape.
Spinach
Adds its flavour and moisture to the cakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes until golden brown on both sides. The cakes are fragile before they set, so they need to be fried over moderate heat and turned carefully. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the surface, which builds flavour and a firm crust that helps the cakes hold together.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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