Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Beignets
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Mix flour and beer to form a thick batter.
Fry
Pour a spoonful of batter into a buttered, boiling hot frying pan.
Add more batter until you have enough beignets.
Finish and serve
Sprinkle coarse sea salt over them.
Serve hot.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beer + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together680 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Flour + beertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together781 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it cooks.
- Beer
- Hydrates the flour into a thick batter and adds flavor.
- Butter
- Fat for frying that adds richness and promotes golden browning.
The step that matters
Pouring into a hot, buttered pan. The pan must be hot enough for the batter to set quickly on contact. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up fat and turns greasy and dense instead of crisp and golden.
“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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