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Dessert

Brignet’s Souffle Fritters

A fried batter of water, butter, lemon zest, sugar, salt, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Brignet’s Souffle Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Bring water to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add butter, lemon zest, sugar, and salt.

  3. Stir in flour until combined.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in beaten eggs.

Shape and fry

  1. Form mixture into small balls or shapes.

  2. Fry balls in hot oil until golden brown.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Eggs set the fritters and give a light, puffed interior as steam expands the dough.
Flour
Flour gives the mixture structure so the paste holds its shape.
Butter
Butter adds fat and richness, giving the dough a tender texture.
Sugar
Sugar adds sweetness and helps the outside brown during frying.
Lemon zest
Lemon zest adds bright aroma without adding extra liquid.

The step that matters

Mixing in the beaten eggs. The eggs should go into the paste after it is removed from heat. If the mixture is still very hot, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly. A smooth, evenly blended paste is what lets the eggs trap steam and puff the fritters.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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