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Dessert

Beignet Souffle

A sweet, airy pastry made from a batter of water, sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and vanilla, fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Beignet Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux paste

  1. Boil water, sugar, and butter in a pan.

  2. When boiling, add flour, stir well, and cook for 6 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  4. Add eggs and vanilla essence. Mix thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Transfer to a piping bag with a large plain tip.

  2. Pipe out 1-inch pieces and cut them off.

  3. Drop into boiling oil.

  4. Fry for 8 minutes, turning constantly, until light brown and egg-sized.

  5. Remove and drain on a napkin.

  6. Sprinkle with caster sugar.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 starch that gelatinises with the cooked dough, giving the puffs structure.
Eggs
Add moisture and proteins that set during frying, helping the puffs rise and hold their shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the cooked dough.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and a finishing layer that contrasts with the fried exterior.

The step that matters

Frying with constant turning. Turning the pieces constantly in hot oil helps them brown evenly and puff without scorching on one side. Oil that is too cool makes the dough greasy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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