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Dessert

Beignets Souffles

A puffed fried dough made with water, butter, sugar, lemon, flour, eggs, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Beignets Souffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Combine water, salt, butter, sugar, and lemon peel in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Gradually add flour until a thick paste forms.

  4. Let the paste rest for 10 minutes.

  5. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  6. Mix in the whole eggs and yolks.

Fry and serve

  1. Whisk the reserved egg whites to a froth.

  2. Fold the froth into the mixture.

  3. Drop walnut-sized pieces into boiling fat.

  4. Fry the pieces until golden and puffed.

  5. Serve the pieces piled on a dish.

  6. Dust the served pieces with powdered 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. 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. Egg + flourtop 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
Whole eggs and yolks enrich the paste and help it set into a light, puffed structure when fried.
Egg whites
Whisked to a froth and folded in, they trap air that lightens the pieces and helps them puff.
Flour
Forms the thick paste that gives the beignets their body and structure as they fry.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the paste and gives a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pieces brown as they fry.

The step that matters

Fold in the whisked egg whites gently. Whites hold air only while they are a light froth. Folding gently keeps that trapped air in the paste, so the pieces puff when they hit the hot fat instead of deflating.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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