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Dessert

Beignets D’Avenches

Fried bread slices marinated in milk or cream, flavored with essence, served hot with apricot 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the loaf into slices ¾ inch thick.

  2. Trim off all crust and cut into convenient shapes.

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

Fry and serve

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

  2. Spread apricot or any nice preserve over them and serve hot.

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
Provides the soft interior and crisp golden crust after frying.
Milk or cream
Soaks into the bread, moistening it so the interior stays tender when fried.
Boiling fat or butter
Conducts heat quickly to brown the outside and crisp the surface.
Apricot or any nice preserve
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that contrasts with the rich fried bread.

The step that matters

Frying in a deep bath of boiling fat until golden yellow. The fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the slices soak up grease and turn heavy before a crust forms. Drain them well after marinating so excess liquid does not spatter or cool the fat.

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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