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Dessert

Beignets d’Avenches

Bread slices fried in fat and topped with preserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 d’Avenches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the loaf into slices ¾ inch thick and trim off the crust.

  2. Marinate the slices in sweetened milk or cream flavored with your favorite essence.

Fry and serve

  1. Drain the slices and fry them in boiling fat or butter until golden yellow.

  2. Spread apricot preserve or any nice preserve over the fried slices and serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  5. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread loaf
Provides the body of the dish; a dense, fresh crumb soaks up the custard-like milk.
Sweetened milk or cream
Soaks into the bread, adding moisture and sweetness that the frying then browns.
Boiling fat or butter
Fries the soaked slices, crisping the outside and browning them to golden yellow.
Apricot preserve
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity on top of the fried slices.

The step that matters

Frying the soaked slices. Drain the slices well before frying so excess liquid does not cool the fat. Hot fat then seals and browns the surface quickly, keeping the inside soft instead of greasy.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter. 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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