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Cheese Aigrettes

Cheese fritters made with grated cheese, flour, butter, water, eggs, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Aigrettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine butter, cayenne pepper, and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in flour and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly.

  3. Add grated cheese and remove from heat.

  4. Beat in eggs one at a time until well combined.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Fry and serve

  1. With lightly floured hands, roll mixture into balls.

  2. Fry balls in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Serve garnished as a savory dish.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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
Forms the starch structure that holds the choux-style paste together.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the fritters puff and set when cooked.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat, and helps the fritters brown when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a tender interior and flavor.

The step that matters

Beat in eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one fully emulsify into the starch paste. Adding them all at once can cause the mixture to split or become too loose to hold its shape when fried.

“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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