Skip to main content
Dessert

Beignets a LA Creme

Fried lozenges of vanilla or orange‑flower cream thickened with flour, coated in sugar, lemon peel, and biscuit crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and sugar 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 ↓

Beignets a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Make a vanilla or orange-flower cream and add a little flour to thicken it.

  2. Pour the cream onto plates to cool, then cut into lozenges.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each lozenge in the beaten egg white.

  2. Sift sugar and grated lemon peel over them.

  3. Sprinkle crumbs of stale Savoy or Naples biscuits on top.

  4. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  5. Serve hot with additional sugar sifted over them.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together422 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Vanilla and sugar 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
Thickens the cream so it sets firm enough to cut into lozenges.
Egg white
Binds the coating so the sugar and crumbs stick to each lozenge.
Biscuit crumbs
Add a crisp, toasted coating that browns during frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and forms a sweet coating on the outside.

The step that matters

Let the cream cool and set before cutting. Flour thickens the cream as it cools, so it must be fully set before cutting. Cutting it warm leaves soft lozenges that lose their shape and break apart in the hot oil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesBaking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipes